


Dice of Destiny

by buddenbrooks



Category: Block B, Speed (Kpop)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Gen, Mind Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 12:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5091545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buddenbrooks/pseuds/buddenbrooks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Human greed is endless<br/>and they repeat the same mistakes<br/>If you live leniently and try for success,<br/>you won’t make it halfway<br/>We tossed the dice of destiny<br/>and can’t allow even one mistake<br/>Aight, get rich or die, let’s survive and go<br/>Nobody, nobody knows."</p><p>In a world with strict hierarchy, Park Kyung is at the bottom, but the choices he makes echo all the way to the top.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this about a year ago and it's probably my favourite piece of work to date. Cross-posted from AFF.

The poster on the wall says, "Smile! You don't know who is watching!"

Kyung rolls his eyes at it and turns away, necking the rest of his energy drink with a wince. It's as foul as ever, sour and suspiciously thick, but he won't make it through the night shift without it. He crunches the can, dumps it in a waste chute and picks his apron off the hook. The sound of tramping feet is already audible through the corridors; he'll be late if he doesn't hurry.

Skidding in a puddle of spilled cooking grease as he hurries, he breathes a sigh of relief, slipping into his place in line just as the clock hits eighteen hundred and begins to shriek. Dutifully he plasters the smile on his face, catching Yukwon's eye and communicating his true feelings with a flicker of his eyebrows. Smiling comes a lot more easily to Yukwon but even he, after a restless morning, is already assuming that frozen up look that becomes common among the wait staff.

The double doors of the canteen fly open and a line of men file in, each one blank faced, stern jawed, straight backed. They barely look at the men behind the counter as they pass by, keeping their hungry eyes fixed on the greyish mess being dropped onto their trays. Before long the room is full, a hundred silent black-clothed backs, a hundred dirty hands moving in unison, a hundred mouths gulping down the gristly meal without comment. No one speaks; no one ever speaks. Their smiles are as pointless as always.

Kyung pushes the spoon around in the industrial sized tins of mess that stand in a neat line in front of him. To his left Yukwon is massaging his jaw delicately with two fingers, the corners of his mouth twitching; to his right Jaehyo's rubbing at his leg. Standing for so long is hell on his injury but Kyung can't really feel sorry for him; he'd warned the taller boy not to step out of line that day, and he only had himself to blame for the punishment. Still, it makes him shiver to remember the way the pneumatic arm of the docker had punched him back into place with such brutal efficiency. He'd not seen one of them strike out like that before. Jaehyo manages to glare at him even while he's still smiling, and Kyung's suddenly glad that their gritted teeth makes speech impossible. He's not getting into trouble on Jaehyo's account.

The first despatch of men finish up their dinner swiftly and march out the way they came: one snaking line of perfectly orchestrated feet and hands dropping trays at the end of the service counter with a series of tinny clunks that make his head ache. Minhyuk carries them away in batches of ten, his face already red and damp from the dishwasher. Minhyuk's lucky that his job role doesn't require a constant smile; Kyung thinks his face would probably crack.

A precise fifteen minutes after the first arrival, the doors fly open again and all of them behind the counter straighten up, take their spoons in hand and brighten their smiles. And that's how it continues, hour upon hour, until the black-clothed backs begin to blur into one and Kyung's not sure if he's still smiling because his face has gone almost completely numb.

 

"I swear it looked even grosser than usual today," Yukwon says, flicking a lump of gristly mess off his apron and wrinkling his nose with distaste. "You know, I always wonder what this shit actually tastes like, but whenever I've got the chance to try it..."

"I wouldn't," Taeil says, pressing both hands into his eyes and leaning back against the wall. "I make the stuff, you don't even want to know what goes into it."

"Can't be worse than the crap we get fed," Jaehyo says gloomily. He's barely on his feet at this stage, having to hold onto Minhyuk's shoulder for support while Kyung unties his apron for him. His eyebrows draw together in a wince as he tests his weight on his bad leg. "If this isn't better tomorrow I don't know what I'll do."

Kyung bites back the urge to say that he tried to warn him - that kind of comment is never helpful - and instead hangs Jaehyo's apron up and nudges him gently. "Let's see." With another wince the tall boy bends down and hikes up the loose leg of his trouser to reveal the bruise on his calf: a perfect circle, deep purple around the outside fading into angry red and noxious yellow. The area is swollen and looks impossibly tender. Kyung makes his own hand into a fist and holds it up to compare, sucking in breath through his teeth.

"Ouch."

"Those dockers are vicious," Minhyuk says. There's a bite of anger in his voice which Kyung knows is nothing to do with Jaehyo's bruise. "They never give you any warning."

"You're not supposed to break the rules," Yukwon says wearily.

"They should give you a warning first."

He supports Jaehyo as they stumble back to digs; Taeil weaves his way ahead, fingers dragging along the walls like he's half-asleep and finding his way by touch. Yukwon drops back next to Kyung, still rubbing his aching jaw. The corridor is cramped, barely big enough for them to walk side by side, and the steady dripping of waste run off from the upper levels fills the whole area with a dank, musty stench. They're used to it by now, and it barely registers, but sometimes when they're especially tired and Kyung feels like the nerves that hold him together have been scraped raw by the endless clanging of metal on metal, he notices it all over again and wonders what he wouldn't do just for a taste of fresh air.

"I sometimes wonder if we'll ever breathe properly again," Yukwon says gloomily, echoing his thoughts. Kyung doesn't reply, shoots him a sharp glare. Even here, in this forgotten and uncared for space, there's always a chance that someone will be listening. Even an infraction as minor as Jaehyo's could be enough to draw someone's attention.

Six hundred begins to strike as Taeil leads them into the low little bunk room; the day shift boys are lined up to file out as soon as they file in, greeting them with sleepy nods and muttered hellos. "How's the mess looking today?" Jongkook says, rubbing his pointed nose as if he can already smell it.

"Foul, as ever," Taeil says. "Enjoy." Led by their own cook they straggle out, each one pulling back his shoulders and preparing to plaster on the essential smile, all traces of which have utterly vanished from the faces of the night shift workers. The door clicks shut behind them, and they're back in their own world: dingy tiled walls, grimy tiled floor, the sagging bunks stacked up on either side and the ventilation shaft weakly huffing lukewarm air into their faces. It's all so ugly, and Kyung thinks the same thing he thinks every single morning: how has he managed to survive so long here?

He remembers, very distantly, things being different - never that different, since by accident of birth he was always destined for these unpleasant conditions, but different enough that he wouldn't mind going back, given the choice. He had grown up with most of these boys; he remembers the high glass dome of their classroom and the way the sky always hung over their heads as they worked, yellowy-blue, breathing down like a God. His parents were always kind, and although he can't recall their faces he can remember his father's voice. He was always soft and insistent, forever telling him that wherever he ended up it wasn't his fault, that maybe when he was older things would be different and there would be more chances for people like them. 

"Whatever happens to you," his mother had added one day, urgently, squeezing his shoulders and looking hard into his uncomprehending face, "you'll always be our son and we'll always love you." He hadn't understood the dampness around her eyes at the time. It had been only days later that the officials came for him, marched him out of the family home just like his sister before him.

In a way he was lucky. He could have been transferred down to level zero, to join the invisibles; he was small, and not too strong, and people like him usually weren't chosen for steady labour, just thrown into Waste Retrieval or one of the mining operations and worked for as long as they could be before their bodies gave in. But his looks had just saved him. Instead he'd been taken not too far from where he'd grown up, and found Yukwon already there, familiar lazy eyes and warm smile, mopping the floor of the canteen. That had been ten years ago, and despite all the upheavals that the lower orders tended to undergo, and the one person they had lost, they were almost exactly the same team they had always been: himself; Yukwon; Minhyuk, the quiet boy who had been transferred to their staff from an assembly line somewhere when someone noticed his beautifully structured face; Jaehyo, who'd always been kind to them despite being a year older and had blossomed out of his awkward, gangly adolescence; and Taeil, who was something of a mystery to all of them, being neither tall nor strikingly handsome, but who could do miraculous things with the leftovers that came to them under the laughable title of 'groceries'.

Kyung has always thought their luck springs from their faces. Like the boys from the day shift, who had also been a consistent team for a good time now, something about their faces plays well together, coheres; they look right standing in a line together and that's important. His doe-eyed boyishness strikes the right chord against Yukwon's razor sharp jawline and feline eyes; Taeil's short and mousy and cute while Jaehyo is tall, elegant, chiselled. But he always thinks they look better out of work, without those painful forced smiles, lying around their tiny room in various states of disarray. If there's such a thing as the real them - if such a thing exists after so long in one grinding routine which aims at nothing less than a complete erasure of their personalities - then this is when it can be seen.

From where he's sprawled on the floor, long legs propped up against the lowest bunk, Jaehyo drums his fingers on his stomach and lets out a long sigh. "I'm so hungry." It's his usual complaint, and no one pays it much heed. With a wry smile Taeil tosses the stubby end of a wrinkled carrot at his head before he turns back to the hob.

"Dinner won't be long."

"I don't know how you can have any appetite after looking at that mess all day," Yukwon grumbles. He's flipping through a trashy paperback, something he picked up from the junk room; Kyung can just about read the title from across the room: Through the Vents: One Man's Story of Success. "Books like this are such a cheap trick," he continues, waving it to emphasise his point. "Like anyone really believes some dude from level one can end up in the golden zone."

"Sungmin believes it," Minhyuk says, and although his voice implies mockery there's not a hint of it in his face, only a dark sort of grimness.

"Yeah, how's he planning this coup then?"

Minhyuk shrugs, halfway through prising his boots off. "Same as ever, I guess. Someone's gonna spot him at work, say, oh boy, that kid's too good looking to be slopping up mess, and hey fucking presto." He hauls his boot off with a grunt. 

"As if. There hasn't been an inspection in months."

"Stupid little bastard."

"He should watch it," Kyung says. "The only place you end up if that happens is down the dirty path."

"He's a kid," Minhyuk says shortly. There's silence in the little room for a second while they all think about the same thing, the one time they ever saw that much desired event happen and how Jaehyo had seen him months later: destroyed, hollow, barely even human any more. A collective shiver runs around them, and Yukwon attempts a smile, cutting through the gloomy atmosphere.

"Apparently this guy managed it by coming up with an innovative idea for the vent system. Plucked up his courage and took it to his district steward and they were all, oh man you are a genius let me give you a level five promo right now."

"Can't have been that innovative," Jaehyo grunts, turning onto his front and fanning himself with one hand. "They still don't work."

"Don't sit right next to the hob then." Taeil nudges him with one foot, stirring away vigorously. "It's not gonna make dinner come any quicker if you sit there salivating."

Dinner does come pretty quickly though, and despite the strange oily texture of it, it's hot and it tastes good to the five starving guys. They wolf it down as silently as the men they serve every day and without much more talking they tumble into their bunks. They don't all fall asleep at the same time; Yukwon keeps his lamp on to read a little more of his shitty book (even if it's shitty Kyung can appreciate the need to escape to some other place, just for a little while; sometimes the general grime and drudgery makes him feel like his brain is dissolving) and Minhyuk sits at the end of his bed, cleaning their boots, which he's done every night that Kyung can remember without ever being asked. It's his quiet way of showing his affection, just like how Taeil cooks for all of them and Jaehyo wakes them up in the morning, gently, before the shrieking alarm can rip through their dreams. 

Kyung lies back and lets his mind wander. When it's dark and almost silent he can close his eyes and nearly pretend that he's not there at all, that he'll wake in the morning and see something other than greasy tiled walls and the exhausted faces of his friends. He can imagine a window at his side with a view out onto rolling green fields and warm sunlight, the pulsing sky above him, and he'll open it and drink in the cold clean air. The vent shaft cranks and hums from the ceiling; Taeil's soft snores start up from the bunk above him. The last thing he sees - as always, probably the earliest memory he has because it's everywhere, prominent and watchful, branded into the mind's eye of every single being who inhabits this labyrinthine structure - is the glowing red logo on the back of the door, the large letter W with the blinking dot in the centre that reminds him that however lonely he may feel, none of them are ever alone.

 

They wake; they go to work; they stand and smile for twelve hours; they come home; they eat; they sleep.

This happens in a never-ending cycle, day after day, month after month, and it's all any of them really know or can remember at this stage but it doesn't stop them from imagining. They have to imagine; it's the only thing that keeps their hearts alive in this crushing treadmill of an existence, the fact that they can still picture a day when things might be different, new - better. Without these flights of fancy they would wither and die. Some days Kyung can't quite bring the images to life and it frightens him. He can feel the sharp edges of his mind going dull and rusty, and he wonders if it's only a matter of time before he becomes dull and whited out like an overexposed photograph, like the older men they see sweeping the corridors, emptying out the waste chutes, no longer any use to anyone because the roses have gone from their cheeks, the sparkle from their eyes. Dreams keep them young; dreams keep them safe.

They all have their own variations, more or less extravagant. Minhyuk is cautious, wishes only for a simple, clean life, one where he can bathe every day and wear new clothes, and eat fresh food, but the look of serenity that slips over his face when he talks about it changes him completely. Yukwon's eyes glow as he spins tales of the woman he'll marry someday: her slender figure, her bright smile, her quick and witty mind, and, "two children - a boy and a girl - and a proper home, a real family, and no one - no one would take my children away from me." Taeil hungers for freedom, talks about travelling great distances, visiting new places, "anywhere that isn't this horrible city, I'm so bored of walls and corridors." Jaehyo mentions food, and girls, but - perhaps surprisingly - it's mostly about his parents, how he wants to see them again and take care of them as they grow old. "This society hates old people so much," he says with a distressed knot in his eyebrows. "I worry for them." Kyung, in turn, tells them about the fresh air he craves and the intellectual stimulation he wants, imagining rooms full of books that he could spend all day losing himself in without ever worrying that he might know something someone doesn't want him to know. But he has another dream, still dearer than this, and it's one he never dares mention.

They are never alone, not really. They may joke, grumble here and there, but only in the privacy of their own room, and even there it's tacitly understood that anyone could listen in if they had half a mind. The dot on the glowing red logo doesn't just see, it hears, and so Kyung never voices his thoughts about it, his dream of one day being on the other side of that camera. He wants to know who's watching. He wants to know the conductor of this dreadful symphony, of which they are only one tiny repetitive beat. He wants to understand the mind behind this towering, terrifying, all-consuming creation in which they live. And he wants to tear it apart.

There isn't a crime more dangerous than sedition. To all outward appearances Kyung is orthodox, to the point that the others roll their eyes from time to time when he pokes them and reminds them to smile, or refuses to engage with their complaints at work. Really, he knows it's only a few easy steps from there to the heresy he carries in his mind. He can't take the risk. Because unlike Yukwon's dreams of family, or Jaehyo's depressingly futile wish of ever seeing his parents again, he thinks there's a chance - just a fleeting, tiny chance - that his dream will one day come true.

 

They're standing in line waiting for the medic drone to give them the monthly once-over when Kyung sees a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye.

At first he's not sure what he's seen, if it was anything at all or just a mirage caused by steam rising from the water pipes and his own exhausted mind - they've just come from their night shift and he's swaying on his feet, starving hungry and barely upright. Then he sees it again, a deft whisk of skin and cloth just picked out in the reddish light cast by the drones' examining rays and reflecting dully off the pipes. From up ahead he hears a little whine from Yukwon as the cold light of the ray brushes over his stomach. He shuts his eyes hard, opens them again, and there's a face - indistinct, the features half-covered by a swathe of black cloth, only the eyes staring down, glowing eerily in the reflected light.

His heart thudding, he tears his gaze away, looks straight ahead at Jaehyo's slumped over back. He could raise the alarm - he should raise the alarm - but he knows that whoever the person up there is, he's doing something that Kyung himself would give a week's worth of rations to do. No one would slip around and hide like that if they weren't outside of the law - no one would be able to. The chips in their ankle would soon alert the security drones and bring them back into line. Kyung has seen an outlaw, and his stomach churns with a mixture of fear and fascination as he moves up the line. When he chances another look under his eyelashes the spot on the pipes is deserted once again. He tries to calm himself and prays the drones don't notice anything amiss in his heart rate.

They're even more exhausted than usual when they get back to their dorm, Taeil slumping against the wall as he stirs the dinner around and Minhyuk falling straight onto his bed without bothering to take his shoes off first. Kyung taps his fingers against his thighs as he tries to figure out a way to bring the slurred conversation around to where he wants it, but Yukwon's fretting about a dark patch that showed up on the scans on the left side of his chest, and an opening doesn't appear.

That doesn't matter though. He can wait, and he does, through another two or three days while the image of those intense eyes floats through his head.

There had been something so alive about that gaze, even at that distance and through the shadows - something dancing, merry, as if the person was so vitally aware of their own freedom, revelling in it. And Kyung can understand why. Outlaws are almost underheard of in their society; it's near on impossible to hide from the endless cameras, the tags that just about everyone is implanted with at birth, the constant surveillance even from your own friends and co-workers because there are always those who will try to gain a little extra for themselves by bargaining away someone else. 

But outlaws do exist - he knows they do, and not only because he's seen one now. It's one of the most famous legends of the lower districts, it has been passed around in hushed voices since Kyung was a teenager and just becoming aware of those furious wrenches in his chest that pulled every time he remembered where he was and how trapped he was. No one could say how much truth there was in the story, and there are plenty of different versions, but it is true that someone had escaped the system. If rumour hadn't been enough, there had been news reports; Kyung can just about remember them hollering through the loudspeakers about a renegade worker, a missing person, should not be approached but should be reported if sighted, and anyone failing to do so would be subject to the strictest punishment themselves. He had looked between his friends and acknowledged the excitement that buzzed about the room with the knowledge that someone had escaped. If one person could do it, there was a chance for all of them. Maybe that hope was why he still remembers the reports, even though according to official word they never existed, and no one had ever got away.

That's why, with his appearance of perfect orthodoxy, it would be far too dangerous to bring the story up without warning or reason. It takes a few days but he's learnt how to wait patiently, so much so that when Minhyuk casually mentions having heard footsteps behind the wall of the storage unit during their shift, he says absolutely nothing and only looks vaguely interested.

"Maybe it was the famous renegade," Yukwon snickers, and Kyung breathes a silent sigh of relief. They do remember then; it's not only him.

"Get this, Sejoon reckons he saw him the other day." Shaking his head, Jaehyo makes a gesture with his finger which suggests he thinks the cook of the day shift is not entirely stable. "He swore blind to me that he saw him at the back of the canteen during lunch service."

"What would he be doing lurking in the canteen?" Kyung laughs. The outburst of noise releases some of the tension that seizes up his stomach on hearing this. "If he's gonna raid lunch service anywhere you think he'd do it on level three at least."

"Apparently he was just standing there. Just standing staring down at the counter. Sejoon reckons he saw him one minute and when he looked back he was gone. No one else saw anything." Jaehyo makes the gesture again and shrugs while Kyung laughs some more, but his throat has already gone dry and his hands damp. Sejoon could be a little strange, certainly, but he believes his story.

Or rather, he wants, desperately, to believe it. Because if it is true then the renegade was lurking around their area - possibly at that very moment. Perhaps he had even chosen them for some reason. Perhaps Kyung is one step closer to realising his dream of escape.


	2. Two

There's no slumped forms when the day shift boys return this time. There's clenched fists and furious grimaces and - only four of them. As they pile in Kyung shoots up from the bottom bunk where he's pulling on his shoes so quickly that he smacks his head on the bed above.

"They took him," Jongkook chokes out, gagging on his own rage. "Sejoon, they took him - in the middle of service, they came in and dragged him off - "

"I told him," Sungjong is repeating, his voice getting higher with each sentence until it starts cracking. "I told him - I told him not to talk about it, I told him - oh fuck," and his shoulders start convulsing. Sungmin's looking around wildly as if figuring out what the nearest thing he can punch is, his fists already tight and ready.

"Wait, wait." Taeil urges them into some sort of silence; without their own cook there he's the one they'll most readily defer to, and his presence is steady and somewhat soothing. "Took him? You mean - ?"

"The security drones," Jungwoo says. Out of all of them he's the only one who doesn't look angry, his expression a sort of dull resignation as if he'd known this was going to happen. And he probably did, Kyung thinks; Jungwoo's smart and practical, and he's seen him more than once try to quiet Sejoon's more frenzied outbursts about their working conditions. "It was all that talk about seeing - you know."

Jaehyo goes dead white and looks like he's going to vomit, although it probably hadn't been his comments that had alerted the listening ears to Sejoon's breach of protocol. He sinks down onto his bunk, dropping his head into his hands. "Shit. Shit, we were just - last night, we were talking about the same thing."

"You weren't saying you'd seen him though, were you?" Jungkook demands. "You weren't running around talking about how he was fucking watching, how he was right there in the room - the crazy bastard, how could he not expect this?"

"I told him," Sungjong repeats, eyes fixed on some distant and horrific point.

Jungwoo closes his eyes for a long second and breathes out hard, his smooth face setting into some kind of resolution. "There's nothing we can do," he says eventually. "He's not going to come back."

Taeil nods, shoots a look around the room at his own team to remind them that they're still due on shift soon, and slowly they begin dragging themselves upright, shaking the shock out of their bodies. "Be careful," he says, briefly pressing Jungwoo's hands in his own. "You know the next guy to come along could be a plant. They'll be looking harder at the rest of you."

"I know." Jungwoo's tone suggests that he's going to take it as personal responsibility to make sure that none of them put a toe out of line again. "And you guys be careful too."

Kyung's heart thuds nauseatingly as they leave; he flashes a sympathetic look at Sungjong which he's sure the other boy doesn't see. He can hardly see anything himself as he follows an uncharacteristically silent line towards the canteen. Harmless rumours are one thing; for such a sudden arrest to be made suggests there was far more to Sejoon's story than they had thought at first. He thinks of the dark figure he saw, crouched high on the water pipe, gazing down at him with a mocking merriment, and he shudders. Infuriating as it is he locks the memory away deep down inside himself. The fear weighs heavy on his shoulders and for the first time he feels like everything he keeps hidden away is there, visible in his face, a clear sign for the nameless watchers to take him away.

 

Their shift is twice as tense and painful as normal; he's never been gladder to shuck his apron and trudge back to digs. No one says a word - they haven't spoken in twelve hours, everyone clearly feeling the same terror that he does, the worry that one wrong word could have them marked as the next one to be dragged away. When they get back there's a new guy heading up the queue of the day shift: cropped dark hair, eyes that crinkle pleasantly when he greets them, introducing himself as Yuwhan. There's enough concern in his expression for his sullen staff to make him seem like a pleasant enough person, but no one trusts him. They can't afford to. Taeil shakes his hand, jaw tight, and says nothing until they're gone, Jungkook wheeling round for just long enough to pull a comic expression of despair.

"Shit," Jaehyo says, his shaking voice the first thing to break the overwhelming silence, and even then Kyung's sure it's just because it's becoming too oppressive to stand. "Shit, what now?"

"We eat," Taeil says, grimly determined, beginning to gather the scraps out of the rations bin. "We eat and carry on. There's nothing else we can do."

He's right, but even though Sejoon's not part of their team his absence can't help but weigh heavily on them. The thought that the authority they believed themselves so safe from is only a step away steals their appetites completely, even though today's leftovers are fresher than usual and their meal is almost tasty. The glowing red W on the door watches over them, and Kyung catches his friends throw glances at it from time to time, like they're worried - just like he's worried - that its powers have begun to extend beyond hearing and seeing, that it can penetrate into their very minds and read the secret thoughts of dissent they all harbour.

Later, as he's lying in bed staring blankly at the inside of his eyelids and willing himself to drop off, he hears Yukwon's hushed voice.

"If they took him - that means that what he was saying was true." It's not directed at him so Kyung turns in his bunk to hear a little better, hears Minhyuk grunt in response and a squeak as he prods the underside of Yukwon's bunk.

"Sh. Don't."

There's a cut off sound like a choked sob. Kyung wants so badly to speak, to say something reassuring, but there's nothing to say - no reassurement could be possible. Even if it were true, there is little any of them can do about it now.

 

They know something's not right before they enter the canteen the next day. The doors are open - it's a strict rule that each chef must lock them securely before leaving for handover, and there's no way a new member of the team would have neglected such an important duty. With his key hanging uselessly from his hand, Taeil fixes them all with a sharp glare over his shoulder: don't speak, don't make a single sound - and creeps forward to peer around the edge of the door. From behind him Kyung sees his hands slacken with shock and urges Yukwon forward, wanting to know what's going on.

"Enter in single file. Line up against the wall," a nasal voice shouts out. Taeil's hands tighten back up, wanting to screw themselves into fists; he nods them forward and there's a collective inhale as they enter the canteen.

It's not the sight of the black clad security officers gathered around the opposite wall that shocks them. It's the sight of the wall itself: defaced with dripping red paint, a tremendous W slashed across it almost from one end to the other, a sloppy and screeching mockery of the formalised lines of the logo they all know so well. The logo itself - sharply delineated in contrast, glowing from above the service station - has been smashed. The winking red dot in the centre is still and dead; the smooth red surface is shattered. Kyung looks from one to the other and his heart tumbles into his boots.

Shock stills their feet for a moment, so that they only shake themseves and begin backing up as instructed when one of the guards peels off and marches over. His mechanised arm with the cruel eye of the gun-barrel pointing directly at them reminds them just how disposable they really are. The guard barely looks at them, his eyes remaining instead on the opposite wall and the mocking graffiti. Taeil sends a look down the line to warn them to be careful, but he doesn't need to bother. Sejoon's disappearance is still at the forefront of their minds.

The guard starts with Taeil, nudges him in the chest with his gun arm until Taeil puts his hands up at his shoulders. "You're chef of this team? You lock the doors last night?"

"Yes," Taeil replies calmly.

"Sure you locked them properly?"

"If they hadn't been locked, you wouldn't have had to force your way in here," he points out. It's a clever observation - the locks on both sets of doors are hanging open, clearly blasted by the guard's weapons, not picked by skillful fingers - but the guard doesn't appreciate subtle thinking, clearly. He jabs the barrel up under Taeil's chin and gives him a warning look.

"Just answer the questions shorty. You know anything about the other team? Think they might have left them open?"

"I doubt it. Yuwhan's just joined the day staff, he wouldn't do anything so stupid straight off the bat." The fact that he's replacing someone who had been arrested without warning goes without saying.

"You give your keys to him last night? Got them back this morning?" Taeil displays the bunch in his hand which Yuwhan had passed over only minutes before.

The guard stares him down levelly. Behind his heavy helmet and black visor his face is all but inscrutable, but the small strip of skin showing displays a thin mouth twisted in disbelief. He turns and walks up and down the row of boys, not looking at any of them. Kyung's stomach starts to ache as the splattered lines of the graffiti blur in and out in front of his eyes. The clock is beginning to strike eighteen fifteen, but there's been no sign of the lines of workers so far. They had almost certainly been diverted to another canteen, and that just makes him worry more. The guards were clearly planning to keep them there for as long as it took.

Then again, he tries to console himself, what did they know? They had only just turned up - they could prove it, the tags in their ankles tracked every movement and a quick look at the databanks would show the guards had reached the canteen before they had. The room had been deserted for ten minutes, maybe more, as the shifts swapped over; they couldn't possibly know what had happened here. The only possible answer was that Yuwhan really had left the doors open - for what insane reason, he couldn't imagine - but if that was the case then it was the day shift that were in trouble, not them.

He straightens out his back a little, tries to breathe normally as the guard makes a turn at the end of the line and comes back towards him. Yukwon's shivering beside him; to his right Minhyuk has his eyes fixed dully on the floor, looking nothing more than bored with the proceedings but Kyung knows that's just his way of dealing with fear.

"So none of you know anything, and none of you were here," the guard says slowly. "Is that right? No one's got anything to say about this?" He indicates the letter painted all across the opposite wall. Without knowing quite how to respond they express their ignorance in a variety of ways, heads shaking and mumbled denials, Jaehyo piping out a bright if shaky, 'no sir' only to redden hastily.

The mouth below the impenetrable visor twists in another direction, less scepticism and more sadism. "Our sources," he says slowly, "indicate differently."

Kyung can feel the drop in temperature as he and all of his friends go cold simultaneously. By now they must all have worked out whose work this defacement was, and even if they had no information about him - no knowledge of where he might be (even Kyung's secret sighting told him nothing more than that he had been nearby at some point) or who he might be - they all knew that in the event of disturbances like this, the authorities were only too willing to seize you based on the smallest assumption. Sejoon's case proved that. There were cellars full of data workers and assembly line monkeys all dying for a chance to get into the upper levels, because even standing behind a service counter in an ugly apron you had at least some chance of being noticed; kitchen staff like them were not irreplacable by any means. Especially not those who were known to swap seditious stories about outlaws, who consorted with people who claimed to have seen them.

Taeil, at least, makes the effort to bargain with them, although hearing him sell one of their friends out in such cold terms is sickening. "We heard about what Park Sejoon had been saying. We didn't believe him. He's always been crazy - a dissenter too." Kyung sneaks a glance along, can't help but be impressed by how smoothly Taeil can tell such ugly lies to protect them.

"Shut up," the guard growls. "We are referring to the culprit of this vile act himself."

The fear on their faces hardens into confusion. From a few steps away, the guard watches them with a touch of amusement hovering about his mouth, as if he's pleased to see the effect he's having. Then a horribly familiar high pitched noise becomes audible: a scraping, whistling noise, one long quavering endless note which scrapes against their nerves. The guard's smile becomes wider; he steps to one side and the drone becomes visible: a tall and slender spire of black studded with evil-looking metal points, the doors for its various armatures quivering as it glides across the floor. The glowing camera atop its crest revolves slowly.

The drones are designed, perfectly, to spike fear into the heart of every worker in the city. They move slowly enough, but everyone knows there is no hope of running from them. Even so, the five boys back up harder against the wall; Yukwon clutches at Kyung's wrist unconsciously and he can feel the other boy's pulse through his palm as fast and brutal as his own.

"If you want to come forward now," the guard says, "you'll make this a lot easier on yourself."

They can't, of course - they don't know who he's referring to, and it's as much of a shock for them to watch the drone approach and wonder who it's coming for - if not for all of them. It's a shock for all of them, but not for Kyung. When the pneumatic arm flies out and the pincer claw clicks around his neck he feels only a dull thud of inevitability.

Yukwon's hand tightens around his wrist and tries to pull him back; he really wishes he wouldn't, it just makes the metal bite harder into his throat. "No," he chokes out, "no, he's - he's orthodox, he's the least - you can't!"

"We have information that suggests otherwise," the guard says grimly. The drone makes a low whistling sound as it tries to move backward; with a click one of the metal-tipped spines on its side punches forward and stabs into Yukwon's stomach. He shrieks, lets go and falls back. Kyung's glad he can't see the rest of his friends. Their looks of hopelessness would only make this worse. "Walk," the guard orders. 

He follows the drone out of the canteen, breathing carefully like he's always been told to so it doesn't think he's trying to pull away. He passes the splash of red, feels his stomach contract in anger. He should have raised the alarm after all. An outlaw was an outlaw; you couldn't expect them to have any sense of honour, or respect for other people. He had been an easy scapegoat, he supposes, staring up like that and making it so obvious that he wouldn't tell, that he only craved the freedom the other figure embodied. Well, he was free - free of the kitchen, free of the stinking digs, and in not too long, free of his whole monotonous existence.

It's hard that it should end this way, but Kyung knows he should have learnt his lesson a long time ago.

 

He wakes in a freezing cold stone room, his mouth parched and a distant thudding in his head. The tranquilisers pumped through his system leave him woozy, and he doesn't try to stand upright just yet, letting the panic that sets in ebb away as he remembers everything that's happened in the last few hours.

It was the walk to the containment cells that was the worst, trudging behind the drone with its ear-splitting whine and knowing that everyone who passed knew exactly where he was going. He'd seen people being dragged off himself, that terrible claw fixed around their necks and ready to crush if they tried to run away. Some were slumped, accepting of their fate; some struggled as much as they were able, pleading pointlessly with the insensible machine that they didn't do it, they were innocent. Some walked with their heads held high, meeting the eyes of those they passed with a mute challenge, and that was the example he tried to emulate. Despite his fears, he knew that they couldn't really see into his head, and whatever they thought he was guilty of, they had no way of proving it.

That was what he thought, anyway, until the door closed on the interrogation room and the man who sat down opposite him - tall, broad shouldered, only his cold eyes showing above the mask that hid half his face - silently pressed a button and played a piece of CCTV footage. He recognised the eyes staring into the camera, their dancing merriment, but the voice was unfamiliar even as it condemned him.

"The renegade himself put the mark on you, as you see," the interrogator said, pausing the video so that the mocking eyes remained fixed on Kyung. "You heard him yourself: 'Park Kyung knows where I am'. What do you have to say to that?"

He swallowed hard, keeping his hands steady only through an immense effort of will. Any single show of nerves could be enough to condemn him. "It's a lie," he said firmly. "I have no idea who he is or where he might be."

"And what do you say to this?" A second piece of footage played then: Kyung saw himself standing in line in front of the medic bots, saw his eyes flicker up to that spot on the wall. He hadn't known the cameras' range of vision went that high - stupid, he cursed himself, wasn't he always the one warning his friends that they could be seen anywhere? The black-clad figure crouched on the pipes and he saw something he hadn't seen the first time: a gesture, aimed down at him, which looked like the renegade was acknowledging him. He saw himself bite his lip, turn away and remain silent as the figure slipped out of view. The man paused the video, throwing up one hand as if to indicate that his continued show of ignorance was useless. "You admit that you saw him on that day?"

"Yes." It would have been stupid to deny it.

"And you admit that you should have raised the alarm, and failed to do so?"

"Yes."

The atmosphere in the room tightened another few degrees; Kyung felt his chest get tight as the interrogator leaned in across the table. "The renegade seems to have some attachment to your district. This is the third time he's chosen to make contact with your staff group. Can you tell me why that is?"

His voice became almost plaintive then, exhaustion and fear knocking at his bones and tangling his thoughts. "I don't know. I swear I don't know."

"Funny. That's what Park Sejoon claimed. Yet you all seem to hold a deep interest in the habits of this criminal." He cringed as the man played a recording, recognising his friend's voices: not one but five different occasions when they'd talked about the renegade, and even though his voice was always the one warning them off the topic, even he could hear the spark of interest in his tone, the reluctance with which he told them to drop it. "Why is that?"

He shrugged, tried to breath evenly; discussing the renegade was frowned upon, he reminded himself, but not a crime, and none of them had said they wanted to join him, help him - it was nothing beyond interest. "I - I suppose it's a topic of interest for most people in level one. The idea that someone can escape."

"He did not escape," the man said; under the mask Kyung could detect a dry smile. "Official word is that no one has ever escaped. You are not supposed to remember. You are not supposed to speak of it. So I will ask again. Why are you so interested?" When Kyung remained mute he leaned back in his chair, working the tips of his long fingers together. "I don't want to go through the trouble of dragging your other staff members in here and asking them the same question. He picked you out in particular; you must have some idea of why."

Kyung felt like his head might crack open. A million theories were whirling round his head, all implausible, but the most dominant thought was, why him? "I don't know," he said again, his voice breaking a little with desperation. "I really don't know - maybe because I saw him and didn't say anything? Maybe he thought I was on his side? I don't know, I don't even know how he knows my name."

The cold eyes grew still icier, and the man's posture stilled in a deadly way, like the drones right before they sucker-punched you back into your place. "I see. Perhaps a few days in the isolation cells will jog your memory then."

The drone that had been waiting in the corner of the room moved forward, took him around the neck again, and despite the fear crawling up his insides Kyung couldn't help but feel some relief - if a very confused sort - at getting away so easily. He walked without resistance to the cells, submitted without complaint to the examination and logging procedure, and then he was inside the cell, a sharp pin-prick entering the back of his neck, and a sort of yawning void opened up in the floor that he stumbled into quickly and quietly.

Now, sitting on the stone floor, he pulls his knees into his chest and allows the shivers that have been building in his stomach to wrack his body. Isolation is certainly preferable to the interrogation methods he's heard so many horror stories about, but it sets up a different kind of fear in him. Without even trying he knows no one would hear him shout. The walls are inches thick, solid stone, and he's right down in the belly of the city, the fumes from the furnaces wafting up through the tiny air vent. The room is cramped, barely largely enough to allow him to lay down flat - poor Sejoon, he thinks, if he's still alive his back must be hurting terribly by now - and utterly empty but for the waste chute against the wall. They could forget about him completely and no one would ever know until they found his bones, maybe years later.

As ugly and uncomfortable as it was, he thinks of his digs with a painful wash of affection. Just yesterday he had wanted to be out of there so badly; now he can't think of anything he'd like more than to be back there, watching Jaehyo stumble into things in his half asleep state and Taeil wrestle with his fraying bootlaces, ready to follow them out for another twelve hours of slopping mess. Only the tag in his ankle, an ever-present lump under the skin which has been with him so long he forgets it's there, provides some comfort. Pressing his fingers against it, he reminds himself that he is still a member of a society - that there are links leading to and from him in the people he's known, and that even if he crumbles into dust in this tiny room, he will not be forgotten about. They wouldn't forget Sejoon; they had not forgotten Jihoon, even years after he'd been taken from them. 

He curls up on the stone floor and lets his eyes wander, but the thought of his window and the fresh air and blue sky has never been further away.


	3. Three

He must have drifted off at some point, despite the hardness of the floor, because he wakes up to stabbing pains in his stomach and the blurry impression of a face bending over him.

His first thought is that it hadn't taken them long, and then to wonder how they were going to do it: if they would use one of those machines he'd heard of, that sent agonising bolts of electricity through your body with the touch of a switch, or if they'd go the old fashioned route, pull his fingernails from their beds and break his kneecaps. Whatever happens, he resolves, shutting his eyes tightly, he would die before telling them anything. He'd have to; he had nothing to tell.

When the expected cold pincer of the drone doesn't touch his skin, he peels open one eye and chances another look upward.

"Are you gonna sit up and get out of here or what?" a voice demands: low, rough around the edges, still with a jovial bite. He blinks hard and meets the eyes, the round eyes with a wicked sparkle. Then he sits up, all horrific thoughts of torture fleeing from his mind at the sight of the black-clad figure.

"How - how?" he just stutters out. The door behind him remains closed, not the slightest chink of light creeping through from the corridor outside; the only light source is the weak beam attached to the hat the outlaw wears. It's impossible; it can't be happening. And yet the hand that reaches down to clutch his is real, warm and solid, as is the arm that slides around his shoulder.

"Explanations later. Gotta get moving. You okay?" Completely robbed of both words and senses Kyung can only nod, watching the other take a length of rope from his pocket and loop it around Kyung's waist, holding the other end tightly. "Hope you don't mind - don't want to lose you." They move swiftly a few steps to the opposite wall, where the waste chute is, and Kyung watches in disbelief as he takes a short, thin blade from his pocket and wiggles it into the crack between the metal panel at the stone wall. The whole thing slides forward, more smoothly than he would have expected, and he's staring down the chute itself, a three foot by three foot square of grimy rusted metal which extends to the left and disappears into darkness. "Just stay close. In you go."

His head spinning, all he can do is follow the intructions and clamber into the entrance. The other follows, yanks the panel back into place, and in the weak light of the beam Kyung can see the black scarf around his face shift as he smiles. "Go on. Straight forward, I'll tell you when you turn. And keep quiet, this chute goes right past the guard's room."

They crawl for what seems like hours but is probably only thirty minutes or so. Kyung's back and knees are screaming in agony from the cramped chute and he wonders how the other - who must be at least twice his size from the brief look he got back in the cell - is coping. The air is thin and foul, makes his head spin, and although he wants to come up with some kind of explanation for this sudden miraculous rescue he can't think beyond the aching of his stomach. He's on the verge of blacking out when he finally hears a harsh whisper from behind him: "Jump. There's a mat." He topples himself forward and hits the ground. The padding isn't enough to stop all the air being knocked out of him, and black circles spin in front of his eyes. He only barely sees the black-clad figure leap in front of him and land on his feet.

"How," he says again softly, and then there's a commotion and maybe a familiar voice or two but he's not sure because the room sort of swells and then closes in on him and his vision darkens.

 

"What," he says faintly, "the hell is going on?"

He's upright again, devouring a bowl of something hot and comforting - if he were less hungry he'd take more notice of the fact that it's also delicious, and has things in it which are recognisable as real, fresh vegetables and tender meat - and sitting cross-legged on the stone floor. The pain in his ankle has almost receded - the first thing the outlaw had done when he came to was hold up a small piece of metal, dripping with blood, and grin at him. The tag has been taken out and he is officially outside of the law. The thought makes him giddy with delight and sick with nerves at the same time. 

The outlaw himself is opposite him, his scarf lying to one side, also gulping down his dinner and watching Kyung with an expression that seems on the verge of laughter. More bafflingly still, there are two more people with them - two people Kyung never expected to see again.

One is Sejoon, eyebrows crinkled in merriment at Kyung's confusion, thankfully in one piece but for a few bruises and some bandages around the fingertips of one hand. The other - and it is this that makes Kyung really think he might have died back in that cell and be in some kind of limbo because he thought he was long gone, dead, or at least never getting back from where he went - is Jihoon. His younger friend is taller than he remembers, broader too, and his childish face has a maturity in it that makes Kyung just a little uncomfortable because it seems so incongruent with the babyish features, but it's him: healthy, smiling, cheeky as ever. Whatever Jaehyo had seen two years back was gone; only a shadow remained in the hooded corners of his eyes and the determined set of his mouth.

"I guess you're pretty confused, huh?" the outlaw says, scraping up the last of his meal and licking the spoon. He sets the bowl off to one side and leans back against the wall, folding his hands over his stomach with a satisfied noise. Now he can see him up close, Kyung is amazed he's been able to move around without detection: the guy is big, broad and muscular, and his stentorian voice carries through the long low room. Something in his face is familiar, now it's completely visible, something in the lines of his jaw and cheekbones, but it's the mouth that really baffles him: wide and constantly grinning. How he can be so pleased with everything despite his status as a criminal is beyond Kyung.

"Why did you mark me?" Kyung says straight away, just to see if the smile drops away. It does, but only a little; it fades into something more sympathetic, almost - but not quite - apologetic.

"It was the only way to get you down here. I can't sneak people out of the work spaces, there's way too many cameras about. Those isolation cells are just about the only places in this fucking city without cameras everywhere. No point, you see, it's pitch black anyway and there's no way out. Well," he brushes the knuckles of one hand against his chest proudly, "not for most people."

"Why - " Kyung begins, and then stops, putting his bowl down and shaking his head. His temples are starting to ache and he rubs at them gently, trying to order his thoughts. There's too many questions bouncing around his mind, so he brushes them to one side and goes straight to the point. "Can you just tell me what's going on, please? From the beginning. I'm so fucking confused."

"How'd you think I feel?" Sejoon chuckles. "Spend all day getting told I'm crazy, then get arrested, then have the same hallucination appear in my cell and get me out of there. It's been a mad couple of days."

The outlaw draws one leg up, rests his elbow on it, looks Kyung up and down thoughtfully. "From the beginning...shit, well, we have to go back a long fucking time then. Pretty much to when you were born."

"When I was born?" Kyung says, aghast, and the bigger man hushes him gently with a laugh.

"Don't worry, this isn't some chosen one bullshit. It just happened to be around that time that someone else was born, and he's kind of the reason we're all here now." He pauses, runs a hand over his chin thoughtfully. "I'm still putting a lot of the pieces together myself, to be honest. Let's start with my name. It's Taewoon - well, it is now, but it used to be something else. It used to be Jiseok."

Kyung feels his mouth drop open, and he can't stop it. "Woo Jiseok?"

Taewoon looks regretful, waves his hands like he's greeting them all. "That's the one."

"That can't be - Woo Jiseok died, there was a national day of mourning, he - you can't be serious!"

For the first time the smile leaves Taewoon's face completely, and he rolls up one black sleeve and holds his wrist out. Sure enough, the official stamp of level five is there, red and blazing on his wrist. Kyung feels lightheaded. "I never died. I ran away. I had to - you've no idea what it was like, I..." For a moment he looks like he's struggling with something, then gives up and shrugs. "I know you guys think the golden level is nothing but milk and honey, but the truth is a lot different. Sure, I was provided for, but I was being trained to head up this cesspit of a city. And I was never really okay with the things that went on here, especially in the lower levels. They make a mistake piling all the kids into the same classroom. I got to ten, eleven, and I noticed my friends being taken away. They wouldn't come back, and no one would tell me why. One day I managed to get away after school and I got down into the lower levels - that was when I discovered the waste chutes. The things I saw..." His face now looks utterly grim, jaw tightened. "Kids my own age working until they dropped - kids I knew, I was in the same class as Jungwoo, you know?"

Something flickers in Kyung's mind then, some clue of what might be coming, but he stays quiet and continues to listen.

"After that I looked for every opportunity to - I don't know, complain, try to change things. It got too much for the family, of course, and eventually my father gave me the hard line and said that if I didn't carry things on the way he expected, I could forget about succeeding him. I knew what that meant. I ran like hell that very night."

The cheery demeanour has utterly dropped away, and the other three boys around him are holding their breath as he cuts his gaze to the floor. Even while he feels a shiver run down his spine, Kyung feels compelled to speak. He's so close to understanding but there are still a hundred questions pestering him - and more than that, beneath the exhaustion and nervousness there's a prick of anger. In front of him sits someone who had the power to change everything just a few years away from him, and he had thrown it up, chosen a lawless life and dragged them all into lawlessness with him - and why? He tries to keep the irritation out of his voice but his nostrils flare as he speaks. "Wouldn't it have been better to wait until you took over? You could have changed something then."

Taewoon regards him levelly, with the faintest hint of sorrow in his eyes. "I know what you're thinking - you think I took the cowardly route. Believe me, if I'd stayed I never would have been able to change anything. Don't you ever think there must be a reason that things stay the way they are? Do you think that if everyone in the top levels knew how their lifestyles were sustained, you'd all still be living as slaves?"

Kyung doesn't have an answer for that, but he glances over at Sejoon - that's always been one of his favourite points of contention, the sort of conspiratory thinking that had Jungwoo so furious with him, and he looks fascinated to finally be hearing his own theories sustained. "I heard something about a patch," he says, thick eyebrows raising, leaning towards Taewoon in his eagerness. "Some kind of control device?"

"That's pretty much what it is," Taewoon nods, and his face twists with disgust. "Just about all the top levels have one - performs different functions depending on if they're militia or nobility but the general idea is the same. Keeps them all safely focused on what's important - their own comfort. Keeps all those niggling nasty questions safely out of their heads. The only ones in the top levels who don't have them are the Controller and his family - my family. I'm not stupid enough to think he wouldn't have been above patching me if I kept stepping out of line. He just realised he should have done it sooner. He didn't make that mistake again."

"What do you mean?"

There's a long pause while Taewoon breathes steadily in and out, and although Sejoon had asked the question it's Kyung he directs the answer at, as if he's expecting him to understand as soon as he speaks. "I mean that the second in line to succeed him is now safely under his control. My younger brother."

Just like that all the puzzle pieces slot into place, and Kyung understands why he's there, why Taewoon looks so strangely familiar - maybe other things as well, like why he'd been spared the gruelling misery of level zero and been given some sort of hope of a better life in the kitchens. "Fuck," he says quietly, while the older man's eyes bore into his own so deeply apologetically. "Jiho."

A memory comes back to him of the glorious dome of the classroom, and himself, Yukwon and a third boy: round shouldered, bright eyed and plumper in the cheeks than either of them were. They never questioned the unquestionable air of being well cared for that he had, just as he never questioned their patched clothes and grimy faces; no one mentioned these things in class, because there they were all supposed to be equals, up to a point. And at that time he hadn't been an heir, only the younger brother, and he had been boisterous and spirited, always the first to come up with a prank or start a fight. They had been a little gang, the three of them, but Jiho had particularly attached himself to Kyung's side for reasons he could never quite fathom. He remembers his tenth birthday, the day before he had been taken from his home, and the fuss Jiho had made of him all day, driven in part by the knowledge that his own birthday was only months away. Yukwon was already gone by that stage, and he knew deep down that he would probably be the next to go but he hadn't said anything, preferring to enjoy the day while things were bright, and he had friends.

For the first time since they sat down, Jihoon speaks, clearing his throat first although his tone is still thick around the edges. "He - he was so upset when you didn't come back to class." Of course, Kyung thinks, Jihoon had only been a year below them. From his earlier thoughts he now can't understand how Jiho could have failed to rebel in the same way Taewoon had.

"The only thing they would do for kids we were close to was make sure they had some chance of survival. Nothing else - too much family to deal with, you know?" Taewoon leans back again, sighs heavily and rubs at his eyes. "I could have had him onside just because of you, Kyung, but our father was already being so careful to keep us apart." And it was only months later, Kyung realises, that Taewoon must have made his escape; that was when the news reports came out. After that Jiho would have been the official heir and, if Taewoon's right, no longer capable of rebelling. "I managed to see him once, a few years back. He didn't even know who I was. I only just got out of there before he set the guards on me. They've got him totally under control now."

Kyung's head is reeling, but he shuts his eyes and picks carefully through the information, and he thinks he can begin to see what Taewoon is getting at. "You needed me to try to get through to him."

There's an air of finality in the way Taewoon crosses his ankles one over the other and raises his hands. "That's about it. He's been programmed not to recognise me, but you might still have a chance - they can't wipe him out completely, you see, they need him to remember enough that he'll be able to take over. You've got a better chance of getting near him as well, the safest way would be to break straight into his bedroom, and you're small enough to manage it. Once you do, and if he doesn't raise the alarm straight away, you can disable the patch and then hopefully persuade him to help us out."

"And what do you need his help for?" But Kyung can already guess the answer, and his guess is confirmed in the way Taewoon's eyebrows drop and his mouth turns deadly grim.

"In bringing this whole corrupt hole to a standstill."

 

Taewoon gives them all a while to digest this information, wandering off into the shadows at the edge of the room to do something with some pieces of metal that scrape over one another jarringly. Pleased as Kyung is to see Sejoon, it's Jihoon he has to turn to first. He still can't quite believe it's really him, and how unusually quiet he's been this whole time serves to make him even more like a ghost. The younger boy looks almost embarrassed at Kyung's disbelieving eyes fixed upon him. He scoots forward, extends one hand shakily.

"It's really me, Kyungie, I'm alright."

He knows he shouldn't ask - everything in Jihoon's face is begging him not to ask - but the question richochets out of him like a sneeze. "What happened to you? What the hell did they do?" 

He remembers him being taken away - the inspection, the white-coated men at the end of the canteen staring them all down with piercing eyes while they sweated under scrutiny and their smiles became almost frantic; he remembers them striding forward and pointing at Jihoon, trembling at the end of the line, and the fake cheeriness with which they told him he'd been chosen. He remembers seeing him being led away, looking back over his shoulder at them like they could do anything to save him, while the remaining inspector told them to start smiling again - told them he'd gone somewhere much better, had won the chance of a more beautiful life, and it could happen to them one day if they just stopped looking so miserable. Every official word on the subject told them that this was true - it was supposed to be their dearest wish, that one day they would be noticed and their liveliness and youth would raise them up from the slums. Every real life account told firmly against it. Everyone knew what really happened to most of those lucky boys and girls who were selected and led away. And what Jaehyo had seen a few months later only served to confirm it.

Jihoon shudders away, dips his head. "I don't want to talk about that," he says softly.

Making an immense effort to keep his voice gentle, to keep the roaring anger he feels from being directed at his younger friend, Kyung leans forward to take his hand again. "It's true, isn't it? All the rumours."

"Yes." Pressing his lips hard together Jihoon hangs his head so low that Kyung can't see his face, and for a moment they remain silent: one ashamed, the other aghast. He's amazed that it is Jihoon who breaks the silence first, that he raises his head again with a determined optimism burning up in his eyes, squeezes Kyung's hand. "But I didn't spend too long there, Taewoon got me out pretty quickly. And I've been here for the last year or so, helping him - we've got this incredible plan Kyung, you haven't even heard the half of it, you're going to be so excited."

Kyung looks back at him with wonder but he has no choice but to accept the torch of positivity Jihoon is desperately offering over to him. "I'll do anything I can to help," he says, and Sejoon, clearly understanding that it's okay for him to speak now, nods with a nearly insane look of enthusiasm.

"I can't wait. I've always known this place was corrupt from the top down, I want to hear about everything."

"We're really going to do it, you know," Jihoon says. "We're really going to make things better. All the other staff, as well, we'll get them out of there."

"That's what I was thinking," Taewoon says, suddenly approaching again with his grin firmly back in place. "But I was thinking, probably sooner rather than later." He checks the time again on the clock glowing from the wall. "It's nearly six hundred - the guards will find that you're both missing soon enough, and when they do they'll go straight to your old teams. Unless we want them all thrown in one isolation cell together, we'd better get down there and spring them."

"You said you couldn't get people out of the digs," Kyung says, but he's already scrambling to his feet. Impossibly Taewoon manages to grin even wider and swings his right hand up; something huge, heavy and black is encasing most of his arm.

"I said I couldn't sneak people out of there."

 

As insane as the plan he explains is, Kyung has to admit it's got a lot of style. There will be no doubt about his presence this time: they're going to drop right into the canteen just before the night shift leave. "Hopefully the cameras will still be out of action," Taewoon says, "but if not we can fix that easily enough," and he tosses them over a few tins of bright red spray paint with a wicked look. "We get the night shift boys on their way out - Jihoon, you can lead them back here, but get the tags off as soon as possible - and the rest of us will wait for the day shift. They shouldn't be more than a couple of minutes, and we can hold the guards off until then, if any turn up. They'll only be coming from the one direction, after all; the second door leads straight to digs, and you know there's never any guards round there."

Terrifying as it sounds, and intimidating as the steel gun Taewoon straps to his arm is, Kyung can't help but be excited. There's a good chance they'll all be killed in the attempt - Taewoon makes no effort to hide that from them - but he'd rather a hundred times die trying to save his friends, showing defiance to the guards and sending down as many of them as he can before their shots find a mark, than alone and terrified in an isolation cell, never knowing if anything he had believed was true, or if things would ever change. Although he shakes as they make their way back through the waste chutes, the heavy beating of his heart sends strong surges of blood around his body that make him buzz, ready for action.

They take extra pains to be silent as they approach the canteen; Taewoon checks the clock on his belt and shows it to them: five minutes until six hundred. The night shift should just be shedding their aprons and preparing to walk out of the door now, and he leans forward with his small blade at the ready to jerry open the front panel when they see his shoulders freeze.

The seconds drag by as they wait for him to move, or say something, and then they hear him swallow hard and the blade drops in his hand. "Shit," he mutters, and then a little louder, "Shit."

None of them can risk speaking loudly enough to ask him, so Kyung - right behind him and small enough to squeeze slightly around his shoulder - strains to peer through the slats of the panel himself. His heart stops completely at that moment as he looks at five utterly unfamiliar faces behind the service counter.

Taewoon holds one hand up, indicating that they should wait, while Kyung cranes back over his shoulder and shakes his head frantically at the other two: not there, they're not there. The door of the canteen shuts heavily behind the strangers, and they sit cramped up in the waste chute, waiting, hearts hardly beating. It seems pointless to even hope, pointless for Sejoon to be silently moving his lips in a prayer: when the day shift arrive, they are equally unfamiliar. Even the newcomer Yuwhan has been replaced. If it weren't for the smashed glass of the logo high on the wall, and the general unmistakability of a room he's spent half his life in, Kyung would have thought they'd come to the wrong canteen.

Jerking his thumb over his shoulder, Taewoon elbows Kyung back and hurries them along - not all the way back to his hide out but to an intersection of the chutes, where a dizzyingly long drop and a searing heat rising up announces the presence of a furnace deep below them. "Not there," Taewoon reiterates, keeping his voice low and barely audible over the roaring of the underground fires.

Sejoon is pale; Kyung feels dizzy. Only Jihoon remains calm, keeping his eyes fixed on the older man intently. "Then - ?" Whatever he's asking, only the two of them know. Taewoon nods, his face utterly grim, and then Jihoon scrabbles to clutch at Kyung's hand without looking at him and his throat convulses like he's going to be sick. Setting his lips resolutely Taewoon motions for them to continue.

No one says a word until they plummet back down the chute into the hideout, at which point the first thing they hear is a defeaning clank as Taewoon throws his weapon across the room and screams an obscenity. Jihoon stumbles after him, hands fluttering to calm him although he looks terrified himself.

"If they're not there, where are they?" Sejoon says. "If they're - if they're in isolation it's okay, isn't it? We can get them out of there, it might be more difficult but - "

Kyung digs his fingers into his side to shut him up. It's easily understood from the fury and terror they're watching that the situation is far more desperate than that. "Think about it," he says softly, as Taewoon throws a kick at the opposite wall and curses again. "If they'd been arrested - the whole team, all at the same time - they'd have closed the canteen, they'd be questioning people. If it's still open then they haven't been arrested. They've been replaced."

Sejoon's face goes first white then green while he processes this. Replacement means one of two things. Either they've been obliterated already, wiped out of existence both phyiscally and officially - or they've been promoted to the upper levels. "Promotion," he says weakly, "It has to be. Which means - "

"Which means they'll be waiting for us. They know already what we're planning. Fuck," Taewoon screams again, "Two years - two years of planning down the fucking chute!"

"It's not necessarily - it might not be as bad as that," Jihoon pleads with him. "Maybe they're just on level four or something?"

"Like fuck are they, Jihoonie." He almost laughs then, an ugly twisted sound, and without warning he rounds on Kyung and Sejoon, still sitting on the crash mat below the exit chute. "Why do you think your teams stayed together so long? Why you weren't constantly being moved around?"

Kyung feels his heart sink again even through the haze of fear at seeing Taewoon come so unhinged. The answer is ready in his mouth, a thought that's occurred to him plenty of times in the past. "We looked good together."

"Exactly. The perfect excuse to bump them all up to level five - especially without you two," he adds carelessly, ignoring the hurt wince from both of them. "Something about how recent events brought it to their attention, they couldn't believe they'd overlooked them so long - it'd be ideal. They'll be under the lasers already, getting patched up - and they'll be especially programmed to recognise the errant members of their team. Fuck." He turns, slams his hand against the metal of the chute above their head and they scramble away behind his back. Jihoon gestures them over, chewing on his bottom lip.

"We'll figure something out," he says placatingly. "We can still use the plan, we just have to - to augment it a little bit."

A long silence holds while Taewoon breathes heavily - then his shoulders jerk back upright and he sweeps his gaze across the room. A light hits his eyes which Kyung doesn't particularly like; it's calculating and cold, utterly removed from the merriment he'd seen there before. "Augment," he repeats, and his stare lands right on Kyung, making him squirm backwards reflexively. "Jihoonie, you might just have something there." In a few steps he's crossed the room and he's looming over Kyung, his eyes freezing him in place far more than his height. He reaches down, takes hold of his chin and turns his face up to the meagre light. Kyung has the feeling that he's being assessed, very precisely, very objectively. It takes all of his effort to hold still and not shudder as Taewoon turns his face left, right, tracks the lines of his cheekbones and jaw with narrowed eyes. "You could walk right in there," he murmurs, and Kyung feels a chill run down his body. "You could walk right under their noses."

Jihoon joins him at his side, looking between the two of them as if trying to figure out what Taewoon is searching for in Kyung's face, and then it seems that he understands and his eyes widen. "No - Taewoon, no, you can't - "

"Jihoon. Go up to level five," Taewoon cuts in briskly. "Don't go out on the floor, just go to the service rooms, see if you can spot the rest of the staff. You two stay here." He lets go of Kyung then, something in the way he draws back his hand that suggests he's snapping something, and not without some effort. "I'll be gone for an hour or so."

"Where - " Kyung begins, but he's already turned his back. He strides to the chute without another word and his head, then shoulders disappear into it. Within seconds there's no more sign of him than the distant clanging as he clambers back up the shaft. Kyung turns his gaze instead to Jihoon, standing wringing his hands and looking on the verge of tears. He doesn't blame him. The switch from grinning optimism to this brutal and icy decisiveness has him utterly thrown, frightened to the point of nausea. He hates how much his voice quavers when he speaks. "Jihoon, what's he going to do to me?"

"I - I'm not sure." The younger boy looks after the disappeared outlaw, rocks on the balls of his feet, clearly struggling with something. "Look, it's probably better if you don't know - it'd only scare you. I've got to go check up on level five - I'll let you know what I find."

"Jihoon, wait," Kyung pleads. It's no use; he's obviously decided where to throw his lot in, and although there is far less resolution in his own disappearance it is just as final. The room seems suddenly too big, too dim, too silent. Sejoon presses up by his side and takes his elbow in a comforting grip. "I thought we could trust him," Kyung whispers. He doesn't know why he's whispering now, only that their surroundings which seemed so cosy and safe now seem like nothing more than another cell, and the feeling he thought he'd escaped - that of being constantly watched - has returned and is cutting into him with ever more painful mockery. He is outside the law, but he still isn't free, and now, it seems, less protected than ever.

Sejoon rubs up and down his arm in a futile attempt to soothe him and stretches his legs out in front of him. "Let's just get some sleep," he says, the forced cheeriness of his voice hitting a horrible dischord against their bleak surroundings. "I'm sure they'll explain soon enough." He doesn't sound any more convinced than Kyung is.


	4. Four

Somehow, despite the hardness of the floor and his stomach-churning panic, Kyung falls asleep quickly, the stress and activity of the previous few hours hitting him as effectively as an anaesthetic. He's bewildered when he wakes up. The lights in the room have gone off and the blackness is overwhelming, pierced only by the red glow of the clock. It's nearing nine hundred hours, and neither Taewoon nor Jihoon seem to have returned.

Sejoon is snoring contentedly next to him, and he doesn't feel like company just yet, so he sits up - bones aching - and feels along the floor until he finds the wall. He sits back against it, gathers his knees into his chest and tries to figure out what woke him up. He had been dreaming, he thinks, which is unusual because dreams have always been rare for him. His days are usually so monotonous that there's little for his unconscious mind to occupy itself with. He remembers vaguely a shadowy figure approaching him, and being unable to move, or perhaps it was only that his muscles had seized up from lying on the floor. There had been sharp points of pain entering his body at the joints, and someone laughing in the background, and then a hazy golden light spreading through the room that dazzled him and drove every thought from his mind until all he could think about was how beautiful it was, how he wanted it to envelop him.

Shivering, Kyung folds his arms around his knees and rests his head on them. His neck and spine are still pounding from exhaustion and cramps, and he feels again what he felt back in the cell, overwhelmed with nostalgia for his cramped little dormitory and the warmth and noise of the four boys around him. But his position now is even more hopeless than it was back then. He's completely outside that society now, the tag ripped from his ankle and his name firmly on the list of fugitives, and the four boys won't be there either - they've gone somewhere, possibly never to return. Everything is irretrievably changed and he feels sick at heart, sick with the knowledge that he could have prevented all of this, he could have kept them all safe if he had just stuck to the rules. They've been told since childhood that the rules are there for their own protection, and now he begins to understand why. As pleasant as Taewoon seems, as intoxicating as the thought of his freedom and rebellion was, he's just another person willing to use them for his own ends.

A distant thudding begins to sound from the opposite wall, echoing in the empty room. A moment later Jihoon drops out of the chute and lands, legs and arms akimbo and a dazed look on his face. He sits up and even in the darkness Kyung can see the tears on his face.

"Jihoonie," he calls out. The other boy scrambles to his feet, wiping furiously at his cheeks, and fumbles on the wall; the weak bulb begins to glow again and he staggers over to drop down next to Kyung. His expression is blanked out and hopeless.

"You should wake Sejoon up," he mutters. "You both need to hear this." Kyung crawls forward and shakes the sleeping boy until he begins to grumble and sit up, groggily rubbing his eyes. Neither of them press Jihoon for information; it's obvious enough from the sight of him that he has no good news to tell. It's merely a question of how bad the bad news will be.

"You did see them, then," Kyung begins, stating the obvious to make it easier. Jihoon nods, glances at both of them without meeting their eyes.

"Taewoon was right - they're up on level five in one of the service rooms. They're - they're completely assimilated, all of them," and when their eyebrows trace shapes of confusion he twitches. The unease radiating from him is palpable. "That means they've been completely worked in as level five workers - I mean - it's hard to explain."

Something in the way his mouth twists and his eyes crumple at the edges sparks comprehension in Kyung. Gently, giving him time to pull away if he wants, he takes Jihoon's hand and laces their fingers together. Jihoon had been at level five himself, in some way. He knows first hand the things that go on there, and Kyung has a feeling that the control patches are not even the half of it. The younger boy takes a deep breath; his hand is tight and damp against Kyung's but it seems to lend him some strength. "When you go up to the top levels, you can't just go as you are, obviously. They want the good looking kids on the lower levels to begin with. To reach the top you have to be perfect, and if you're not they - they make you perfect. Not just the way you look, either." A shudder wrenches at his body, visceral horror at what he's seen. "I - I can't explain without you seeing it. It's like they're clones. They move exactly the same way, they speak exactly the same. There's nothing of them left. Just empty faces, empty eyes. Mannequins. Nothing else."

Abruptly he hides his face against Kyung's shoulder and hot tears soak through his shirt. Bewildered, he can't do much more than slip his arm around the other boy and try to soothe him, looking at Sejoon over the top of Jihoon's head. He looks as confused and scared as Kyung feels. Neither of them can imagine their friends like that, but the closest they can get is more than disturbing enough. "But it's just the control patches," Sejoon says near desperately. "They'd go back to normal once we got rid of those, right?"

"It's not that!" Jihoon wails, and Kyung realises he's not clutching onto him for the sake of his own comfort. His arms are tight around him; it is a gesture of defence. "I'm sorry," he says, his voice muffled with his own tears and Kyung's shoulder. "I'm so sorry."

Even as Kyung feels the ice solidify in his stomach, the metal chute shakes for the second time and the large dark figure drops from the bottom, gets to his feet, a massive shadowy presence which approaches all too swiftly. "Jihoon," he says sharply, and Jihoon just holds on tighter.

"I won't let you," he chokes. Kyung looks up at the grim face, recognises in the coldness of the eyes the need for haste and objectivity. This is no time to be emotional, to mourn what has been or will be lost. Once again, he has one opportunity to change things, and since there is no going back he would be a fool to refuse to go forward. It takes some work prising himself out of Jihoon's hold but he manages it eventually, and he sees just a hint of the smile return to Taewoon's face as he stands before him and holds his head high.

"I'll do whatever you need," he says. As much as he doesn't want to trust this outlaw, he's robbed of all other choices now.

"We'll get you back in one piece," Taewoon replies. It's a hollow promise, but Kyung appreciates the gesture.

 

He'd like to eat another meal before they go but Taewoon says it's not safe since he'll be going under anaesthetic, so he climbs after him with his empty stomach gurgling with nerves and Jihoon's sobbing still ringing in his ears. The younger boy had been near violent in his attempts to stop them from leaving but Kyung had stood his ground, adopting the icy demeanour that Taewoon employs so neatly. He tries to convince himself, as they crawl along the chute, that it's not such a bad way to go after all, if Taewoon can't manage to get him back. He'll be happy, he supposes, since he won't really remember anything else, and he'll be safe and well fed, back with his old friends. The dark question lurking at the back of his mind of what happens to the workers of level five if they fail to satisfy, if they lose their youthful sparkle, is one he ignores utterly. In a few hours he won't even remember ever having such a thought.

He runs over his instructions one more time to calm himself. If all goes to plan, he'll only have to spend a few hours - half the day at most - in that wiped out state. "We can bet on the regularity of this place," Taewoon had said. "The controller always goes to dinner at eighteen hundred, just like everyone else. I'll switch the patch off a few minutes after. You'll have to keep your composure, follow the lead of the other boys - muscle memory should be some help." In the background a still tearful Jihoon had nodded his agreement, rubbing at the back of his neck with a horror stricken expression. "It's up to you to get near enough to Jiho and get him to recognise you. You'll have half an hour - after that I'll have to switch it back on, or the security sensors will catch you when you leave the room. What happens next depends on him. I'll give you another half hour to get clear of the room and switch you off again." He looked levelly at Kyung, pretending not to see that his hands were shaking with fear. "I won't lie, this is really high risk. If Jiho doesn't recognise you, or you can't get a message to him, get out - go hide out in the chutes until you're switched off again. If you get caught by the guards there won't be much I can do, although I'll post Sejoon down to watch the cells if you don't come back. But this is the only way we've got of getting to Jiho and having a chance of saving the rest of your team."

"And you're sure you can switch it on and off?"

There was a hideous, sickening moment where Taewoon bit hard into his lip, but to his credit he didn't break eye contact. "I'm nearly a hundred percent sure that I can. But something could go wrong. We can't rule it out."

There hadn't been much Kyung could do other than to nod. It seemed like a suicide mission but some small, crazy part of him thought it might just work, if only because of the memories, just now returning, of his childhood with Jiho. "I wish you were my real brother," Jiho had once said to him, and standing in front of his real brother Kyung almost musters a smile.

"You're being phenomenally brave," Taewoon says suddenly; the shock of his voice makes Kyung start enough to smack his head on the top of the chute.

"Thanks," he says with an impressive lack of sarcasm. "But I don't really have much of a choice."

"Of course you do." Without warning Taewoon stops where he is, and Kyung pulls to a halt just shy of his shoulder. There's no light in the chute, so he can't see the face that turns towards him, but the voice is enough: hushed but fiercely sincere. "After everything I've seen, I'd never make someone do something they didn't want to. If you said you couldn't go through with it, I'd let you go. You could stay in my hide out the rest of your life if you wanted. I'd find some other way to bring things down." Kyung thinks he sees, in the shadows, a slight shift of the shoulders that suggests shame. "I could never do it myself."

"It's a good thing I'm here then," he says, and there's a grim note of humour in his voice. Taewoon snorts and they continue in silence. Despite the fate awaiting him, Kyung can't stop thinking now about the boy at the centre of all of this, the boy he'd known as a child. He's starting to remember - because years of hunger and hard work drain the good memories from you so easily, and he'd made other friends since then, friends who had been with him during the hardest times of his life - just how close they were, and how strange it will be to see him again with their statuses now so utterly removed. His biggest regret, with what lies ahead, is that the first time he meets Jiho again he might not be himself; he might not even recognise him. Then again if he pitched up as he is now, dirty and skinny and ten years older, he doubts Jiho would connect him with the kid he'd passed notes to in class and come to crying when he scraped his knees. Even then Kyung had been older, wiser, if only because of his upbringing. Now Jiho is the heir to the entire city, controlled by the person who gives him his status, probably entirely unaware of what's going on outside his beautiful world. And soon enough, Kyung will be just the same.

The chute pops out this time in a room that is so dazzlingly white he has to blink a few times before he can see anything. When the spots stop swirling in his vision he sees endless walls of mirrors and shining countertops; florescent lights explode from the ceiling and everything - high-backed chairs, jars and bottles, scissors and brushes and scalpels - ranged with surgical precision along the surfaces. The few people in the room stop their urgent conversation and snap their attention to where he and Taewoon have emerged. Taewoon stumbles to his feet, rubbing his eyes, irritation crossing his brow.

"Damnit, why is it always so bright in here?"

"The bright light of beauty, Woo," one of the men says. He separates from the others and crosses the room, offering down a hand to help Kyung to his feet. His eyes are narrow and scan him head to foot with the same impartial gaze that had scared him so much in Taewoon. It's doubly terrifying coming from this person. He looks almost harmless, willowy and graceful with a natural curve to his mouth that makes him look like he's always smiling, but his eyes are utterly ruthless. "This is the one then?"

Kyung's grateful for the protective way in which Taewoon throws an arm around his shoulders; it probably looks casual to the onlookers but there's a reassuring tightness in his muscles. "Yep. What do you reckon?"

The man steps a few paces back and scrutinises Kyung again. He's never felt quite so small and grubby. "He's a bit scrawny," the man says sceptically. "Not much I can do about that, but the face I can definitely work with." Just like Taewoon had he lifts Kyung's chin with two fingers and turns his head from left to right, but this time the other hand comes up, pressing down on the bones beneath his skin, testing the skin around his eyes. "Wow. What the hell are they feeding you in the slums?"

Kyung jerks away from his touch with a hot rush of anger. "Barely anything." The man doesn't seem shocked, just gives a cool laugh and brushes a hand over his hair.

"Don't worry. I can fix all of this damage. I can make everything better." He bends down a little, fixes his eyes on Kyung with a look he can't pull away from. Through the fear of losing himself he can see everything he could attain reflected in the man's dark eyes, all the beauty and ease of posture - the rightness that will allow him to walk undetected through the highest levels of society. Taewoon gives a little growl and pulls him back slightly; lost in that gaze he stumbles.

"Don't get creepy, Mino. Just do your job." Mino straightens up, a hint of displeasure crossing his smooth face, but it's gone with a haughty sniff.

"Don't order me around, renegade. You know you can trust me." He gestures with a long arm to one of the chairs sitting in front of the endless mirrors. "Come and sit down then, and let's see what we can do." It crosses Kyung's mind briefly, as he follows the elegant man to his seat, that he hasn't bothered to ask his name. He supposes it hardly matters to him. 

He hasn't seen his own face in so long - they have no real need for mirrors in the digs - that it stuns him to realise what other people have been looking at this whole time. He is scrawny, and filthy too, the dirt of the kitchens seeming to have embedded itself in his pores; the constant smiling has kept the lines from his face but in this new setting he looks wary, his eyes darkened and suspicious. His hair is a tangled mess, and Mino goes there first, ruffling it from one side to the other. "A new colour, you think?" he murmurs to one of the men accompanying him. Then he turns back to Kyung, feeling him begin to twitch under his hands. "Just relax. Let me do my job. I'll give you something for the nerves, okay?"

Taewoon kneels at his other side, catches his eyes in the mirror. His eyebrows are drawn down unhappily and Kyung knows it's not just because of the way he looks. "It's not too late to say no, okay? I won't be angry."

Kyung looks at his own thin face, then back at Taewoon, serious and solid. No matter what he's thought before, there's something in his face - maybe it's only the echoes of his brother - that Kyung can't help but trust. He reminds himself why they're doing this, and what this sacrifice could mean: for himself and Taewoon; for his friends moving mechanically through the rooms of level five; for every person slaving their lives away in the lower levels. He grits his teeth, shakes his head.

"It's okay. I'll do it." He looks up to Mino, who's standing behind him biting into his lower lip, and manages a smile. For the first time he sees what he's been presenting to the workers he served everyday, and he's faintly impressed by it. "Go on. Make me beautiful."

"I'll give you the tranq," Taewoon says. He presses Kyung's hand before he makes the injection, giving him one moment more of himself.

As soon as the cold liquid slides out of the needle and into his veins, he sinks back into the embrace of the chair, all the breath rushing out of him in one long soft sigh, and from then on everything becomes a blur, glowing prettily around the edges. Taewoon disappears into the background somewhere and only these tall angelic-looking men are left, buzzing around him with gentle voices and quick hands. He loses track of time completely; at some point someone holds water to his mouth and tells him to drink; minutes later, or it could be hours, he's aware of being flat on his back with a blinding light glaring into his face, and it's too bright so he shuts his eyes, and there's a confused jumble of pain, strange buzzing noises in his ears and a high-pitched whine that reminds him of the drones. He tries to struggle upwards, finds he can't, sinks back down and lets himself drift in this weird cushioned world where colours play in front of his eyes.

He blinks back into existence with indistinct faces looming over him. His eyes hurt when he tries to force them open wider, and a cold hand soothes his forehead.

"Just stay still," Mino says, his voice fading in and out. "We're all done but you need to rest a little while."

"Can I - see?" he manages to say; his throat is burningly dry. Someone offers water again which spills down his chin, and Taewoon bends down close enough that he can see his eyes, round and reassuring.

"Not right now. There's too much bruising but - but you look great, really. Listen," and he swallows, a touch of guilt in his words. "We're going to patch you up now, okay? We can't waste time - the sooner we get through with it, the sooner we can get you back."

"It's better that way," Mino agrees. "If you see yourself before you're patched you might start to freak out." His thumb rubs over Kyung's brow lightly. "I promise it won't hurt."

They move him onto his front, brush the hair away from the back of his neck - and he's right, it doesn't hurt at all. He's barely even aware of the pins going through his skin, and when they switch it on all he feels - or rather, sees - is a golden light moving up through his head, and every harsh thought and dark memory simply melts away, wiped clean as the mirrors that surround him.

 

The rooms he moves through are high and airy, and the roof is a sweep of glistening immaculate glass; the sky above pulses down clear and yellow-blue, the sun a hazy halo somewhere off in the distance. Every step is like walking on air; every breath sends a new fresh wave down his body and everything is so clear - his mind, his vision, the way forward - it's all so clear. His spine is straight, his skin feels like it's been cleaned and refitted, he can feel the brush of his hair against his ears and the soft cloth on his skin. Every sensation is magnified but blurred somehow: intense but undefinable and it's beautiful - everything is so beautiful, beautiful.

He doesn't need to worry about smiling. It's impossible not to smile. He smiles at everyone, everything he passes and they smile back: eyes wide, teeth perfect, elegant and effortless. He doesn't need to worry about where he's going either; he knows exactly where he's going, what his job is, why he's there. He doesn't need to think. His mind hardly moves from its serene resting place. Something else directs his movements, a dependable whisper at the back of his head that moves his muscles with barely any effort from himself.

He enters the hall - the high hall, sparkling with incandescent light, echoing with a musical hum, rich colours bleeding from every wall - enters without hesitation and slips into line at the long table behind a tall boy with dark hair who vaguely makes him think of something, but it's so far away that he doesn't even bother, drops the thought with perfect ease. They move with a beautiful rhythm, like one entity, circling the table and serving.

It's a dance - a glorious dance, and it is eternal, and so is he - so is everything.

 

Eighteen hundred strikes, and the room - it had emptied out only moments ago - comes back to life with a new set of shining, beautiful people. They sweep in and take their seats with a graceful murmur of conversation; Kyung holds a chair for a striking woman in red, dazzled by her shining hair and the jewels sparkling on her neck. The last people to enter command a sudden hush, the men standing to attention, the women holding themselves straight. The man is tall and brutally handsome, features bold in a square face, and he scores over the room with one look, checking that everything is in place. The woman is small, slender, bird-like, her eyes quick and clever, darting between her husband and the boy who stands between them. The boy - nearly a man, not quite, still too fresh faced and gentle to have grown to maturity - is as clear-skinned and pretty as a doll: soft white-blond hair, rosy mouth, long feline eyes. With a nod from his father he takes his mother's arm and leads her to the table. Kyung, along with the rest of the serving staff, holds his breath at the proximity of these terrifying untouchable people. Even in their erased states they know, deep down, that these are the people who hold their lives in their hands.

It's this held in breath that saves Kyung when, without warning, the glittering illusion drops from his eyes. He very nearly loses his balance as the rose-tinted hue through which he had been seeing everything fades away; it's like coming up for air after spending too long underwater and he wants to gasp, but his already full lungs remind him of where he is, and he remains as impassive as the statues to either side of him. In his periferal vision he catches a familiar looking nose, wants so desperately to turn his head and see if it's who he thinks it is, but he keeps his eyes straight ahead and presses himself into the same blank state that all the others are in.

Surprisingly, it's not that difficult to emulate them. Even if he'd been able to make a ruckus the sheer sumptuous glory of his surroundings would have intimidated him into silence. He feels overwhelmingly out of place without that comforting self-assurance that the patch leant him; one wrong move and he knows just his flushing cheeks would give him away. There's some lingering memory from the programming drummed into his head as well, and that helps as the staff turn and begin once again to circle the table, mutely attending to the diners.

Here and there a name catches his ear, and he begins to realise - although really he could have surmised as much - that this is the very cream of society, the absolute top level. Just as level zero, the menial workers who cleaned and carted away rubbish and toiled in the mines were known colloquially as 'invisibles', those of level five were nicknamed 'nobility'. The epithet is not a jest, he can see that now. Everything about them speaks of perfection, elegance, expense. This is where the dreams of just about everyone below them in the hierarchy lie, but he notes with a barely held back shiver the shining silver panels attached to the backs of their necks, and he knows that this is not where true happiness lies, whatever Yukwon's trashy paperbacks say.

The only necks that don't bear that mark of control are those of the controller himself, and his wife. Kyung's forehead grows damp as he moves towards their side of the table, seeing the way the controller watches everything that happens around the table, examining every person he's sitting with - and his wife watches him with just the same hawk-like attention. Only by drawing his focus inward and concentrating on breathing evenly does Kyung manage to pass behind their backs without giving himself away by the tremors in his hands, but he can feel the sweat run down his back and his stomach clench in pure terror.

Taewoon had been right - Jiho is marked in just the same way, visible in the single-minded focus with which he carries on conversation with his parents and eats his meal, a poise and self-possession that is eerily incongruent with his lanky, youthful stature. The spirited light in his eyes and the cheek-splitting grin which is so familiar from his older brother, which Kyung remembers so well from the child he once was, are gone without a trace. His eyes are as round and empty as any of the serving staff.

His chance is there - the clock reads ten minutes past eighteen hundred, and he doesn't know how long they'll sit at dinner. He might not get near Jiho again. The rhythmic swaying and dipping of the staff is almost impossible to break out of - the synchronisation becomes hypnotic after a while - but he manages it, dropping just a centimetre lower than he should, enough to nudge an elbow into Jiho's shoulder. The controller, thankfully, is staring hard at the other end of the table at a small squat man who's eating with rather larger bites than the rest of the company, and he doesn't notice his son twitch and glance up.

A few seconds and the line will have moved on. Kyung looks down at that familiar yet desperately alien face and wills Jiho to recognise him. You once wished I was your brother, he thinks, and pushes his luck just a little further, tugging one corner of his mouth up and hoping Jiho will recognise the smile he always used to call cheesy.

The other boy's eyes widen, just the tiniest fraction; his lips part like he's going to speak. Already feeling the staff to either side of him preparing to move on, Kyung gives the barest of nods, flicks his eyes to the clock and then back to Jiho, hoping he understands: later, after dinner.

The white-blond head shakes; his eyes drop back down to his plate. Kyung moves along in line with everyone else. He's sure the next person he serves can hear how loudly his heart is beating.

As it turns out he does have one more chance to stand behind Jiho. Once again he manages to knock at his shoulder, and this time Jiho is ready, flutters a look up from under his eyelashes which is fully cognisant. His father isn't looking in the other direction this time, so Kyung doesn't dare change his expression but he sees Jiho's lips move without sound, mouthing his name. He knows who he is. That's the best he can hope for, and as Taewoon says, the rest is up to him.

It's eighteen twenty by then, and he moves off again down the immense table; all he has to do now is wait, and see whether his next cold dunk in the water of reality happens with Jiho close by, and himself safe, or in an isolation cell - or perhaps the last thing he'll be fully aware of will be the bullet entering his brain.

 

He files out in line with the rest of the staff; the sunlight is lowering, peachy and tender, and it touches highlights into the hair of the boy in front of him which makes him want to bury his fingers in it - but he doesn't, even though it looks so soft, because that isn't right and he knows that like he knows where he's going without looking. The double doors of the dining room are propped open to either side of him, and the angelic figure tucked behind one of them seems so wistful - too beautiful to be wistful, he wants to comfort him but it isn't his place. He turns his eyes ahead and keeps walking, and the other boy falls into step by his side. The clutch of slender fingers around his wrist is so delicate, so perfect, and when he pulls him out of the line and leads him back to the dining room he catches sight of the raised red W on his wrist.


	5. Five

The next thing he's fully aware of is a timid hand slapping at his cheek. He groans, bats it away and shuts his eyes. Being thrown in and out of that dream-like state is beginning to make him dizzy.

Then he remembers and his eyes fly open fully; he looks up to see Jiho, bending over him with wide eyes and a slowly dawning look of relief. "Oh," he says, breathlessly thankful. "I was worried you were gone for good."

"It's a temporary thing," Kyung says, and shifts into a more upright position, looking around to see if he's doomed or not. 

It seems not. He doesn't recognise the room but it's pretty clear it's Jiho's private quarters that they're sitting in. The bed behind them is vast, draped with deep red curtains; the carpet beneath his feet is pure white, plush, and the furniture tastefully scattered about is of a quality he's never seen before, antique in appearance but still pristine. Light floods in through an enormous window set in the ceiling, rolling from one wall to the other, and through it is visible not only a vast expanse of sky, now fading from yellow-blue to navy-back with a peppering of weak points of light, but also the surrounding mountains to the right of the city, the peaks looming far above them and disappearing into the clouds.

Jiho steps back from him and drops down on the end of the bed. He's pulled an armchair up for Kyung, too soft and deep for him to sit in comfortably; he arches his back against it and leans forward, rubbing at his eyes.

"It's really you then," Jiho says. Between the memories of the loud mouthed youngster and the more recent acquaintance with the brash older brother, Kyung is shocked by his meek tone. This, in turn, reminds him of the second part of his mission: to free Jiho from the influence of his father. That will have to wait, though; he wants a few minutes at least to speak with his childhood friend, and there's a heavy chance that the removal of the patch will bring guards screaming down on his head.

"Yeah," he says, finally levering himself out of the chair and dropping comfortably to the floor instead. "I never knew, you know - that you were the son of the controller."

"I'm so glad you finally made it up here," Jiho says. There's real pleasure in his shy smile, and Kyung is struck by the impression that Jiho might not have forgotten him as quickly as he was forgotten. "I always knew you would eventually - I always thought..." He trails off there, colouring slightly, and Kyung gives him some modesty and looks away.

"It's actually not what you think it is." He makes a face, trailing his fingers through the thick carpet while he thinks of how to broach the subject. This was one thing he'd not had time to plan. "I didn't exactly work my way up here."

Jiho looks politely confused. "I thought you must have done? Especially after I saw Yukwon and Jaehyo - I thought it had taken them a little while to find you but my messages must have got through eventually."

"Messages?"

Jiho's shoulders curl inward and he shifts uncomfortably - embarrassed, Kyung realises with a shock. "Well, I couldn't let you stay down on level one, could I? Ever since I found out, I was trying to get you promoted - I kept asking, and father said he'd move you up soon enough." He looks up, and the sincerity in his eyes takes Kyung by surprise. "I've been looking forward to seeing you again so much."

He had hoped to be remembered, maybe even to be believed, but this is beyond what either he or Taewoon had expected and he has no idea of how to react to it, how to play it to his advantage. He's not even sure if he wants to. The largeness of the room hits him, along with the memory of the silver square plastered to Jiho's neck and the cruel searching gaze of his father, and he realises quite suddenly and sickeningly the truth of what Taewoon had told him. It is beautiful up here, to first appearances, but there is a deep vein of toxicity running through everything, and it's visible and present in Jiho's increasingly hunched posture, the expression of misery forming on his face as Kyung fails to tell him what he wants to hear so badly: that he's here as a friend, that they can be close again. That he isn't alone any more.

His heart contracts painfully, and despite himself and the pressing urgency of his mission he gets up and sits on the bed next to Jiho, takes his big thin hand in both of his own. "Look, I - I'm so happy to see you," he begins, clumsily, stumbling over his words. "I really am, I never expected you to remember me, after so long and - "

"And the augmentation," Jiho finishes for him, perfectly innocent in the way he says it. His eyes sweep over Kyung's face and only then does he remember Mino and the alteration he'd gone through to get in undetected. "I'd know you anywhere though - they didn't do anything to your cheesy grin, did they?" At last a proper smile graces his face, and some of that old mischief reappears. The memories that punch into Kyung's chest are so painful that he wants to cry. "It looks good. You look really good."

"Thanks," Kyung says, unsure of what else to say. He rubs a hand along his jaw line, finally feeling if not seeing the difference, and he's a little staggered. Mino certainly did know his job well. "But - but in all honesty Jiho, that's not what I'm here for. I mean, I didn't come here - I mean." He stops, growls with frustration at his own inarticulacy, and Jiho's hand tightens over his.

"It's okay," he says quietly. "I know the patches can really mess you up. Mine's not so bad but it still makes me confused sometimes." He touches two fingers to the back of his neck and Kyung realises his chance has come. He swallows down a lump of guilt and reaches up to touch it as well.

"I've actually got a little bit of a knack with these things," he lies. "I could sort it out for you, if you wanted."

He's never done it before, of course, but after Jiho turns pleading eyes on him he'd have to have at least tried it. Taewoon had given him a little bit of instruction - he'd said it was as easy as getting the panel of the waste chute out, but that was metal, and this is real human flesh, and his hands start to shake as soon as he takes the little tool out of his back pocket and looks at Jiho's bared neck. The four pins driven into his skin look harmless enough, but this isn't a temporary mechanism; it's made to last and he doesn't know how deep those pins go.

"Just - just hold still," he says, hoping Jiho can't feel how much he's shaking. "This might hurt a bit."

He has to shut his eyes as the first pin slides out, feeling Jiho jerk under his fingers and bite back a high-pitched noise; he holds up the piece of metal, far thinner than he'd expected and shiny with a thin coating of blood, and tosses it reflexively onto the bed before he faints. The hole it leaves is barely visible, oozing blood. He presses a tissue to it and continues, feeling a little braver. Before long all four are lying next to him, glinting and cruel looking, and the silver panel just falls into his hand. The coiled wires on the underside are visible now, and the indentations in the skin that they've left. Jiho pitches forward with a little moan and Kyung presses up against him, rubbing his hand over his back.

"Take deep breaths. Just relax. Lie down if you need." He does, flopping backwards and throwing one arm across his eyes; his chest is rising and falling rapidly. Kyung can only imagine the feeling, having experienced just a taste of it earlier. This time it's half of Jiho's life that will be flooding back to him. He gives him space and as much time as he can before he speaks again, keeping a careful watch on the clock. He doesn't want to put anyone else in danger, and Taewoon's expecting him back within a few hours.

Eventually Jiho sits up again, groaning. "Oh wow. That was horrible. I didn't - " He stops, licks over his lips and opens his eyes tentatively. "I didn't think that much had been locked out."

Kyung waits with apprehension for the anger, the realisation of what he'd been subjected to, but it doesn't come. Jiho just looks down at the mechanism lying next to him and quirks his eyebrows; there's something strangely reminiscent of his brother in the gesture. "My father will be furious," he says.

"Do you remember anything - anything important?" He's aware of how hesitant he needs to be in his questioning, of how fragile Jiho's mind will be in its newly restored state, but he's hungry for information. Jiho looks at him hard. This time it's his father than Kyung sees in his eyes: that penetrating, searching look that seems to break right through his skull and into his thoughts.

"Why are you here?" he says, and his voice is newly hardened. "You didn't come for a reunion, did you? And you didn't get up here through official channels, or you wouldn't be fiddling around with my patch."

It's a little scary to be discovered so quickly, but it's also just like the bright, ruthlessly inquisitive Jiho he used to know, so rather than unsettled Kyung finds himself strangely at ease - a lot more than he was with that timid, locked up boy Jiho had been only minutes previously. "Your brother sent me here," he says, watching carefully for a flicker of understanding. It takes a few moments more; the memory of Taewoon - Jiseok, he recalls - would have been buried as deeply as possible, but eventually Jiho nods, only vaguely.

Then a look of sheer horror jolts his head up. "Jiseok," he says, "Oh - oh no, they - they told me he was dead - they - " He stutters out small nonsensical noises while his shoulders convulse like he's going to vomit - and then the anger that Kyung expected sets in. His eyes narrow and his jaw sets so tightly that the skin seems to stretch across it. "They lied - they said he was dead. Then they took my memory away completely. He sent you?" he demands, and quite suddenly Kyung finds Jiho right up in his face, hands clawing into his shoulders. "He's alive? Where is he - why did he send you?"

"For the same reason he left," he blurts out, petrified. Dragging in a breath, reminding himself that it's up to him to get Jiho onside, he reaches up to his biting grip and slides his fingers slowly around Jiho's. "He wants to make things better. To change things for everyone. That's why he ran away from the family - that's why they put you under such close control. We need you, Jiho," and he watches Jiho's expression slide from fury to confusion. "We need you to bring this society to the ground. To stop the corruption - the slavery. You didn't want me working in the slums, did you?"

Jiho blinks slowly, shakes his head; his lips are trembling.

"Then why should anyone else have to? Do you know what it's really like outside of this - this beautiful world of yours? Do you know how you can live with such ease?"

As fa apart as they have been, and as strange as their reunion is, Kyung can't help but be proud when Jiho straightens his mouth out into a firm line and sits back from him, on the floor, leaning against the bed. "Tell me."

So he tells him - everything.

 

They use some glue Jiho finds in his desk to reattach the panel - without the pins driving into his nerves it won't work, but it looks convincing enough not to alert the guards, and Jiho promises that no one will suspect Kyung if he's with him. Kyung believes him too; the guards are clearly programmed to respond to the mere appearance of the heir to the city, and their deference is almost embarrassing, as is the consummate ease with which Jiho accepts it. Even without his patch he's able to act every inch the haughty son of the controller, and they're waved through to the digs of the level five staff without a question. 

"I'm picking my own servers tonight," Jiho tells the man who stands watch outside. "I'm having a private party on behalf of an old friend, and I want to pick my own staff."

Only Jiho's expression of disdain stops the man from genuflecting on the spot. Then they're through to the dormitories, and Kyung has to hold in a gasp because even after seeing Jiho's bedroom, he hadn't expected staff quarters quite like this. Level five isn't only glorious for its nobility; the staff have a comfort he could previously have only dreamed of. The beds are single, no more than five to a room, with ample space around them for a small dresser and a bedside stand; the lighting is soft and steady, nothing like the flickering single bulb he had back in his own digs. The kitchens are apparently separate - there's no sign of a dirty hob or a refuse chute for their rations, and a small door at the end of the room stands ajar, revealing a shining white bathroom with - he almost salivates over the sight - a deep white bathtub.

They walk through a few rooms, connected by the kitchens, until they find the one they want. The staff here - as Jiho explains - work only every other day, for eight hours rather than twelve, and those shifts are split into four hour blocks. There are less people on level five, and they get bored seeing the same pretty faces everyday. It's a safe bet that his friends will be here, and sure enough they are - except they aren't his friends.

Jihoon had been right; horrifyingly, disgustingly right. They are mannequins and nothing more, spending the time they aren't working in lying on their beds, staring up at the ceiling. The smiles are still on their faces, absent awful smiles at nothing at all. Minhyuk isn't cleaning boots; Yukwon isn't reading a trashy paperback. There isn't a single complaint from Jaehyo, he's as mute and content as the rest of them.

Jiho clutches at Kyung's shoulder as he doubles over at the sight, so upset he's ready to vomit. "We'll fix them," he says low into his ear. "You fixed me, you can fix them. Just let me handle it." He stands in the centre of the room and clicks his fingers, his pose as stately and commanding as a young heir should be. Like magic they rise to their feet and are attendant on him, standing at the ends of the beds with their hands perfectly by their sides and their empty gazes perfectly directed. Despite his encouraging words Kyung can see Jiho holding back a shiver, especially when he looks towards their other childhood friend Yukwon.

It's not just their blankness that is shocking. It's their faces, their appearances. Kyung still hasn't seen what Mino had done to his face, so he doesn't yet understand the full import of the augmentation procedure, but even from a few feet away he can see the changes: the sharpened definition of Minhyuk's nose; the bleached blonde of Yukwon's hair; the unnatural rosiness of Taeil's cheeks. Just like Jiho the first time he saw him, they look like dolls, not people: dolls, made to human order and desire, forced into an ideal which erases all traces of the people they had been. They had been good looking before; Kyung had always known that. Now they are unnatural, otherwordly. Terrifying.

"I am giving a dinner party tonight," Jiho announces, holding their attention effortlessly. "I want the best staff to attend to me, and I've chosen you five. Please follow my friend towards the exit and he will give you your instructions."

As blank as they are, they're still clearly programmed to be excited at the prospect of further advancement in this false hierarchy, and there is a definite buzz as they move into a line - such a perfect line, Kyung's heart aches on seeing how neatly they line up - and follow him to the door. Jiho signals over his shoulder - he's going to go ahead and fetch the day shift boys as well - and he moves along. The guard remembers him and lets him through without a word, although his eyes flicker sceptically, probably sensing the lack of a control patch among them but unable to isolate it to any one person. He waits, sweating, at the doors of the dormitories for Jiho to appear. Quick as he is, it can't possibly be soon enough; the feeling of those dead eyes on him is enough to make him dizzy. He has to fight not to look at them, knowing it will undo him worse than ever, but unwillingly he keeps turning his head anyway, drawn by the sight of the impossibly beautiful faces, the subtle but oh-so-strange changes that have taken these figures from people he knows and loves to silent strangers. When Jiho arrives with the day shift - equally silent, equally terrifying - marching behind him, Kyung's just about ready to run.

"This is horrible," he says, a little too loudly to be safe, and the guard at the door twitches. Jiho grabs his elbow and shakes him back into order, glaring hard. He thanks the guard with overt condescension and leads them off down the hallway, fingers still pinching into Kyung's arm.

"I know - I know, it was horrible seeing you like this, but we've got to be discreet." He mutters this out of the corner of his mouth then turns to look at the line of people following them. Thankfully it's late in the evening now, and there are few people around, or this would look bizarre, but anyone they do pass sees Jiho and averts their eyes. He is, after all, second in command after his father.

They wind through a few corridors and then - quite suddenly and quite unexpectedly - the guards at every door vanish, and the space they enter is still and completely silent. They walk through this empty area for what feels like miles. The doors all lie open, revealing huge bare rooms with the vista of the sky sprawling through the glass ceiling. They halt in a vast ballroom, empty but for a single massive chandelier, and Jiho points over to a waste chute unobtrusively planted in the far wall. "Will that do?"

Kyung nods abstractedly but he's more interested in the space around him. "This place seems to go on forever," he says, his eyes wandering in awe. "Why is there so much empty space?"

Jiho blanches, looks away. For the first time Kyung gets the feeling that he knows a little more than he's telling. "Because it's meant for a lot more people," he rushes out, and begins to lead them over to the chute. "Jiseok could probably explain it better than me."

Without thinking, still taken up with wonder over the sprawling space, Kyung begins to prise the panel from the wall like Taewoon showed him. When he's done he stands, looks back at the line of silent smiling dummies, and gestures for Jiho to go first. "I've got to get the patches off," he says. "And I think you've probably got a few things to catch up on with your brother."

Jiho makes a face that is somewhere between thankfulness and fear, and slides into the entrance of the chute. After a few brief instructions, stuffing the map Taewoon had made of the chutes into Jiho's hand and pointing out where he needed to head, Kyung watches his feet disappear into darkness, hopes he finds the right way, and turns to his old friends. All still in a straight line, they are so stiff that he thinks one single prod might topple them over.

"Right," he says, and squares his shoulders, fingering the tool out of his pocket again. The cries of distress and confusion that echo around the empty room as he releases them one by one is something he hopes to never hear again.

 

It feels like the longest journey so far back to the hideout. It probably is, considering how high up they are. There are far too many uncomfortable sloping passages that they have to slide down inch by inch, holding onto the walls to stop themselves from plummeting; the metal is worn smooth from the constant ferrying of trash, and more than once they have to pin themselves to the wall and hold their breath - and noses - while another load chunders past. For a horrible moment Kyung thinks he's lost them in the maze of pipes, panics until he feels heat beneath his fingers and realises it's the same furnace he'd stopped at before, and then there's a low piercing whistle from ahead of him. A few metres further forward he finds Sejoon, waving frantically with an expression that is equal parts dread and intense hope.

"Are they - did you - ?"

"They're okay," Kyung whispers back, and they both look over his shoulder at the line of people following him. Keeping such a large group quiet has been difficult but thankfully, and in spite of their recently reawakened state and desperate desire to talk things over, they all understand how serious the situation is. Jungkook, near the head of the line, peers over Jaehyo's shoulder and his face breaks into a wild sort of glee on seeing his former cook alive and in one piece. Sejoon waves back, grinning all over his face, and beckons them on. "Taewoon thought you might have got lost - you've taken a while."

"It was a bit of a mission," Kyung says heavily. Not only removing all the patches, but calming his friends, some of whom became near hysterical on understanding what had happened. Ironically, given his previous wish to move up in the hierarchy, Sungmin had been one of the worst, only stopping his high-pitched gasping noises when Minhyuk slapped him firmly around the face. The rest of them, for the most part, had simply stood in baffled silence for far too long while Kyung tried to urge them into the chute, rubbing at their heads and necks, looking at one another and trying to understand the changes in their appearances. He couldn't blame them, he'd been just as staggered - but it was hardly the time to be appreciating their newly bestowed beauty.

They take plenty of time to do so when they finally tumble, one after another, out of the chute and into Taewoon's hideout again. Kyung rolls off the mat and watches them land in a heap of limbs, trying to persuade the ones up the top to move slowly, but they're so wrung out already that they ignore him. Still, a few bruises might take the edge off those unnatural faces. He's sympathetic to their confusion. His first question, when he turns towards the two brothers conferring intently with their heads together, is, "Do you have a mirror down here?"

It's the first time Taewoon's seen him in his perfected state, without the swelling and bruises, and his expression suggests it's quite a remarkable change. He fumbles for a second, looking like he's holding in laughter, before going to the back of the room, returning with a big square mirror and holding it up wordlessly. Kyung feels his knees go weak as he looks at himself. 

It's funny that this is only the second time in years he's seen his own face, and both times are so close together, yet the difference between them is stunning. He'd never thought of himself as anything more than handsome - and boyishly so, assuming that his looks would fade swiftly with maturity; realistically he'd only ever expected to live out a few more years in the kitchens before being transferred downstairs where no one would see him. Now he understands Taewoon's unnerved expression. Just like the rest of his former staff members, he's unnatural, near alien, but undeniably - and he hesitates, hates to use the word for himself but it's the only word he can use, and since it's not his face he sees but another entirely, crafted by a deft pair of hands, he feels it's almost acceptable - undeniably beautiful.

"Fuck me," he says, entirely without irony.

Taewoon explodes into a fit of laughter that slaps all the tension out of them, and within moments they're gathering around to gawk at themselves as well: faces turning, jaws and cheekbones being admired, hair smoothed or ruffled into a preferred style. Taeil, typically, gives himself no more than a brief glance, commenting that they could have made a little more effort; Minhyuk seems fascinated with the lines of his face and spends a good few minutes figuring out which angle he looks best at before Sungmin and Sungjong shove him aside to argue over who looks better as a blond. 

Taewoon, Kyung can't help but notice, is more preoccupied elsewhere. Much as he continues to laugh at the astonishment of the augmented boys, he spends most of his time with his arm around Jungwoo's shoulders, the two of them talking in low voices which Kyung deliberately turns so as not to hear. After an awkward pause, and much to Kyung's surprise, Yuwhan joins them, and they greet him like an old friend.

His own attention is largely fixed on Jiho, sitting by himself at the back of the room with his knees drawn up. Jihoon is at his side, not saying anything, but it looks like his closeness is some comfort. Kyung leaves the comforting noise of his friends to head over and sits at Jiho's other side.

"Jiseok says I have to betray everything," he says without any preamble. "Betray our father, the family, everyone in level five. He says I have to set everyone free."

This sounds like a bizarre complaint until Kyung looks again at the mark on Jiho's wrist, the big red W which picks him out as the second - or third, if you count his mother - ranking figure in the entire city. He can't even begin to imagine what he's been indoctrinated with, what he's been told about the people of the lower level and how that clashes with his own experience of them - his friendships with Kyung, Yuwkon, Jihoon; his experience of the boisterous young men who are examining their new looks with such excitement and astonishment. Taewoon, he remembers, had seen it all first hand, the ugly conditions in which the lower world lived. Jiho had not, and he'd been stopped from even thinking about it for as long as Kyung had been living it.

The three of them are at different stages in their understanding: Kyung, living entirely at the bottom with only the haziest understanding of the top; Jiho the polar opposite of him; Jihoon, who had experienced both sides at their ugliest. It is the youngest who now speaks, his deep voice sounding more mature than either of them. "It isn't a betrayal, Jiho. Your father betrayed everyone he was supposed to look after. You'd only be putting right what he did wrong."

Even to Kyung this doesn't make much sense. He feels Jiho tense up at his side and unconsciously slips his hand around his calf, rubbing with his thumb at the muscle. "What did he do wrong? He inherited a flawed system. Even if he hasn't fixed it, we can't really blame him for that."

He sees Jihoon wince and look away, and knows immediately that he's got it wrong - so terribly wrong that Sejoon's mad conspiracy tales begin to weigh a little heavier in his mind. Jiho, too, looks uncomfortable, and Kyung recalls the huge empty rooms in level five, and Jiho's quick dismissal of his questions.

"That's not the way it was, I hate to say." They look up, all three of them, to see Taewoon standing over them with Jungwoo and Yuwhan at his side; maybe it's just the presence of his old friend but he looks softer, wearier, and yet more hopeful than before, not a forced and cheery optimism matched with a violent grin, but a nearly gentle glow of anticipation. He drops down beside them, crossing his legs, and leans forward with his elbows on his knees and his gaze fixed somewhere just above the floor. "This city isn't a pyramid, you know. It's not like there's a huge space at the bottom and very little room at the top - it wasn't built that way. It was built in a circle, all the way up, so that no one could ever be at the apex. All that cramped space in the lower levels - that was only ever intended as storage, or at best space to develop once the top levels did become more crowded. Level five is despicable simply because it's so empty. Because only a handful of people are allowed to live near the sky. That's not the way it was supposed to be."

He tells them, softly, his voice almost breaking with shame, how the city came to be: how the defensive structure of the gargantuan tower had been built to shelter a new colony from the rays of the violent sun, once the atmosphere had been stripped away. He tells them how the original founder had come with a dream, and enough wealth to realise it: a city where everyone could live in peace and beauty, surrounded by comfort, a far cry from the filth and deprivation he had grown up in. But the greed of humanity is endless, and his dream had not endured. 

"He passed away too early," Taewoon says; Kyung is shocked to see tears begin to form in his eyes. "His second in command - our grandfather - was young, and he had no experience of the poor conditions of the place they had come from. What he saw was potential - the potential for himself, and a few others, to live in absolute grandeur. And that's how it began."

And slowly, comfort had given way to martial rule; beauty had faded, replaced by dirt and degradation. Those faithful to him, those who promised him they could keep control efficiently, had been granted positions of status. Anyone else had been shunted slowly downwards, into the belly of the beast, and communal wealth had been replaced by mass poverty; communal understanding by dictatorship and constantly watching cameras. First the fourth level, those tasked with beaureacracy, which had quickly become the third level as the militia required to safeguard the newly emerging system took precedence. Then the third level had arrived, what were known as the drones - the human counterparts of those terrifying machines who watched and recorded and issued commands. Level two, the domain of physical labour - the engineers, mechanics, builders - dropped still lower, because how could one be beautiful when one was always dirty? And then their own level one, those who toiled namelessly, ceaselessly, serving the upper levels.

Beauty still reigned, but only as a token. Status was prefaced on beauty, and beauty was only ever superficial.

"Some types of work," Taewoon says, his words halting for the first time ever as he registers the sheer horror on the faces of everyone now gathered round and listening, "are just more aesthetically appealing than others. Our father may have inherited a flawed system, but he was completely in his own mind - unlike Jiho has been. He could have stopped things when he succeeded. But he didn't."

Kyung feels utterly sick. He thinks of his parents - his siblings - the friends he had known as a child and never seen again. He thinks of the cameras on the wall every way he looked, and the faces of the day shift boys when Sejoon had been arrested, and their numbing shock when they watched Jihoon being dragged away from them. Even though they are not their father, there is enough of him in them that he wants to tear Taewoon and Jiho to pieces.

Only Jiho's arm around him stops him; only then does he realise that he's raised himself to his knees with every intention of shutting Taewoon's awful story off with his fists. The taller boy looks close to scared, raising his hands in a gesture of peace. "We're going to stop it," he says, intent on making Kyung believe him. "I swear to you, we're going to put things back to how they should have been. You've done brilliantly, you really have."

He sinks back to the floor, his limbs going limp, and leans in against Jiho's side. "Why did no one stop him?"

"Because some people are willing to do whatever it takes for success," Jungwoo says gently. "Some people want an easy ride to the top. All they had to do was fall into line and they'd get whatever they wanted."

"And anyone who didn't fall into line," Taewoon adds, makes a swift slicing motion with his hand and his meaning becomes all too clear. Kyung shivers, and Jiho slides a not unwelcome hand through his hair. "So," the older boy says, his tone leaping back into that brusque decisiveness that Kyung's become very familiar with, "We need to decide where we go from here. Because frankly, we're really quite short of time."

His look falls, not upon Kyung, but on his younger brother, who straightens up and stills his hands. "We talked about this. I don't want to - I won't hurt them."

"You don't have to," Taewoon says, clearly exasperated, and Jiho sits up even more, dislodging Kyung from his side. His cheeks get a little red as he matches his brother's steady gaze with an equally steady, if more heated one.

"If we do what you're thinking - you can't honestly tell me they'll be safe. If the lower levels get up to the top they'll rip them apart - all of them, including - "

Taewoon pales just a fraction as Jiho mouths, indistinctly, a word that Kyung doesn't quite catch - but his face remains set and resolved. "I can try to keep them safe, but we have to take the chance. Fuck, Jiho, would you really prioritise their safety over the thousands of people being exploited in this dump?"

"They're our parents," Jiho says, mouth folding with a weird kind of sanctity.

Turning away from the sight, Taewoon shrugs off the mollifying hand Jungwoo places on his shoulder, snorting with red patches starting up in his cheeks. "Yeah, sure. He's always been just great to you, huh? Telling you the truth about everything and giving you a free choice."

"Fuck you."

"Really, if you love him that much then you're still free to go - Kyung'll tell you, I won't force you into anything."

"Don't drag me into this," Kyung says, getting swiftly to his feet. Taewoon has the decency to look somewhat embarrassed through his anger. Only Jihoon, looking away from the brothers glaring at one another, bothers to grab his arm and try to tug him back down.

"Don't," he whispers. "He'll listen to you." Whether he's talking about the older or younger, there's a bit of truth in his words either way. Kyung capitulates and sits down again, making it clear with a darkened expression that he's not going to put up with any more squabbling.

"Jiho," he says firmly. "Do you want to change things, or not?"

The blunt question throws him off guard and has him fumbling for words, mouth flapping open and closed. "Of course," he splutters out eventually, "why wouldn't I - "

"Then," Kyung continues, cutting him off neatly with the trick he learnt from Taewoon, "how much are you willing to sacrifice?" And he knows, as his eyes drill into Jiho, that Jiho will be taking in everything around him: the boys and their changed appearances - Kyung's changed appearance - the dirt and discomfort of their surroundings and the air of neglect and hunger that still surrounds everyone from the lower levels, regardless of their few days living the high life. He knows Jiho will compare this with his own lifestyle, his lavish living quarters and the respect he so effortlessly commands from those around him. And he knows - confirmed as Jiho reaches surreptitiously up to his neck - that he will remember the patch which stopped him from understanding all of this; will realise that he wasn't supposed to know - that there was a reason he wasn't supposed to know.

In his experience of Jiho, apart from those moments in his bedroom when he was still controlled and distant, Kyung knows he's smart, just like his brother, with the same ruthless curiosity. He will understand that the only reason he's been privileged to live as he has is because the rest of them have lived as they have: hungry, toiling, always watched, never free.

Whether it's pride or sincerity driving the hard look in his eyes, Jiho is at least no longer quiet and mournful looking. "Anything."

Kyung just hopes he's telling the truth.


	6. Six

They have to move quickly. Deliberately Taewoon gives his brother little time to think over the commitment he's just made, butting in as soon as he speaks to start outlining the plan. It won't be long before Jiho's absence - and the absence of ten members of wait staff - is noticed, and then the red alert will go off and the city will be swarming with guards. "We're safe down here," he says, "the sensor system doesn't work at the deepest levels - they never bother tagging the invisibles. But as soon as we start moving out, the slightest bit of attention will bring them after us."

"Will they think to look through the chutes?" Jungwoo says. Taewoon shifts uneasily, shrugging.

"I'm not sure. I've never been caught in there before, but they must realise by now that we've got a secret way of getting around the city. It'd only take a bit of clever thinking to figure it out. Still," he tries to brighten his tone as the others shift their gaze towards the chute they came from, as if expecting a hundred armoured guards to stream out of it instantly, "there's miles of chute, and only a few of us. Sound carries, the guards are covered in metal. We'd hear them coming."

"What worries me," Sungjong says slowly, and it doesn't escape Kyung's notice how his eyes are flickering towards Sungmin as he speaks, "is whether we're really going to be able to start riots as easily as you think. I mean, no offence but you never lived in the lower levels."

"You're expecting too much from them," Minhyuk says bluntly. "A lot of people don't know any other way of life. They're looking to be promoted, they've been told that's the only way."

"I don't know if we can persuade them to take action out of the blue like this," Taeil agrees. Among themselves the rest of the staff begin to murmur, casting sceptical looks at the two brothers, and Kyung knows exactly what they're thinking: what gave these boys the right to dictate their actions like this? How could Taewoon presume to know the way in which they had lived their lives - the fear and oppression, the deadening repetition, the constant understanding that despite what they were told, this really was as good as it could get for them. He didn't understand the task ahead of them, of converting in such a short space of time a mass of people who had only ever known inferiority, who had been raised since birth to expect nothing more.

Despite the mutters of dissension, Taewoon doesn't lose his composure. He raises one hand for quiet, smiles with his head on one side like he's amused by their lack of faith. "I can't believe I'm hearing this from ten guys who did nothing in their dorms but complain about the conditions. It's pretty fantastic though - quite the coincidence that your teams came together, the only people in the whole of the lower levels who really understood how bad things were. It's amazing none of you were arrested sooner, if that's really the case."

His clanging sarcasm doesn't go over well; Kyung sees a couple of the boys lowering their eyebrows, Minhyuk's face assuming that flat glare which is still familiar despite the changes. Jaehyo goes a little pink in the cheeks, protesting, "That's not what we're saying - it's just that they don't know us, or you, and they don't know if they can trust us."

"They don't need to trust you," Taewoon says. He holds up his wrist, displays the red mark splashed across the inside. "With this, we can show them what we mean. I'm not asking you all to go in there and start preaching - there aren't enough of you. All you need to do is use the operative moment to spark the flames. You've heard of mass hysteria, surely? It only takes one person to make a crowd into a mob. You'll be that one person, in various places."

"So what will the operative moment be?" Jongkook asks, looking excited in spite of himself.

The outlaw smiles wider, raises his eyes briefly to the ceiling, and they all look up as if expecting to find the answer hanging over them. "When the scrutiny switches from the top to the bottom."

 

Kyung's still not really sure if he's convinced. The climb to the very top of the city is a long one and gives him plenty of opportunity to think things over. The immediate worry is that there will be guards in the lower level, and it would be all too easy to pick out the one dissenter - but he has enough faith in his friends' intelligence and ability to go unnoticed; they've been doing it long enough after all. 

What he's really concerned about is whether Sungjong's objection will hold water: whether the other people of the lower levels are truly cowed to the point that, if shown what they've been missing out on, they would applaud the nobility for their high standards and think it all right and proper that they should be slaving to support them. Whether, in the end, they would rather turn on the dissenter and tear him to shreds than have their own understanding of the hierarchy disrupted. Whether they've really been living like this for so long that they don't believe they deserve any better.

In the end, the group had been almost equally split between those who thought things coudn't possibly change, and those who understood Taewoon's comment about the unlikelihood that they were the only ones to ever notice a problem. Those who disagreed maintained they had never understood the true disparity until they awoke in those glorious surroundings; until then they had not known that they were being robbed, had only thought that society had an order and they happened to be at the bottom of it. They complained about the conditions, but they never believed they could change them. 

Kyung can understand this; he's not sure that, days ago before everything turned so rapidly on its head, he really would have believed himself capable of this kind of rebellion. He had dreamed of discovering the truth behind their situation, but he had never thought it could be toppled, not really. He was just one person, after all. The city is vast; the reach of its control, seemingly limitless.

Then again, to think of them accepting such powerlessness is vaguely sickening, and he could see in some of them - the older ones, mostly, the ones close enough to the end of their natural youth that the question of what happens next had weighed on their minds for some time - a shift from scepticism to abashment as they realised what they were denying themselves: agency in their own lives. They had a choice, just like he did, and to choose not to do anything - to choose to make themselves powerless and refuse the agency that was offered - that was what really meant they deserved nothing more than filth and toil. If they weren't willing to fight against it, then they couldn't complain about it.

"It's not fair," Sungmin had said, close to tears and utterly ignoring everything Sejoon was attempting to show him about the little laser pistols they would each carry, just in case. "I don't want to shoot anyone - I don't want to start riots - I never asked for any of this, it's not fair." 

He had a point, Kyung couldn't help but think, and he knew by the way the red-rimmed eyes flickered up at Sejoon that Sungmin was only inches away from throwing accusations at his former cook. It had, after all, been his indiscretion that had placed the day shift under scrutiny. Sungmin is young - younger even than Jihoon - and he has real stars in his eyes, or he had before all of this happened. Kyung remembers the way he would line up behind his friends every morning and no matter how grouchy and exhausted the rest of them were, he kept himself bright, urging them on and trying to raise their spirits. He'd been truly invested in the ideal of their level; he was determined that he would be chosen. 

There is a grim sort of irony in the fact that he'd got his wish, after all, but at such a price. It's the kind of dark humour which Minhyuk, standing nearby with a few others going over a map of part of level three, doesn't fail to pick up on.

"It's not fair, you're right," he said bluntly, and Sungmin looked up, his face quavering. "But you said you wanted to be moved up to level five. You thought you deserved that, right?"

"Yes," the younger said defensively, following immediately with, "but not like this, not like a - a criminal!"

"If you really want something - if you really believe you deserve it, you should be willing to fight for it. Otherwise you're no better than the ignorant self-serving bastards who sit at the very top. You're not entitled to anything any more than they are. Got it?"

Sungmin had shut up then, lips pressed together furiously but clearly too close to crying to say anything else. Despite the bite in Minhyuk's voice he was completely right. Kyung could see that the older boy looked at him with more than a hint of new-found respect, now he'd had a chance to relay everything he'd done since his arrest. He wasn't the only one either; Yukwon had sidled up to him, announced himself only by the tentative brush of fingers over his newly-defined jawline, and when he turned it was to be met with awe.

"I can't get over it," he'd said, covering up his awkwardness with a little laugh. "I mean everyone else looks great but you - this is something else."

"They had quite a bit more to fix," he said wryly, but he appreciated the words anyway. It's unsurprising how little about Yukwon has changed; he was always beautiful anyway, smooth skinned and delicately featured with that natural upward sweep to his eyes and lips. The newly white-blonde sleek hair just accentuates that bone structure, and they've done something to his skin too, making it utterly flawless, near translucent in its fineness. But apart from that he's still Yukwon, and his eyebrows still have the familiar sceptical slant, his mouth still twists to one side when he's not sure what to say.

It did it then, while he was still looking over Kyung's altered face, and then he'd darted his eyes across the room to where Jiho is still huddled up against the wall. "I can't believe what you did," he said.

"It was Tae - Jiseok's idea, really."

Yukwon shook his head. "How did you even know he would recognise you?"

"I didn't," he said, and Yukwon blanched. "I had to try," he explained, "it was the only way to get you guys out of there." And he has a hunch that this is the only reason that Yukwon then agreed, so easily and quietly, to the plan Taewoon laid out to them.

Sungjong had remained unconvinced - he had only ever wanted a quiet life, and agreed to go back among the crowds only when Yuwhan said he would go along with him. Jungkook had been ready to barrel out of there as soon as Taewoon gave the word, hanging onto Sejoon's arm with a barely repressed look of near genocidal glee. It was funny how, after the monotonous life they had lead and the few days of total erasure, their own characters in truth lay buried just below the surface, and it took just a few hours of total freedom and a little tension to bring them to the fore. Kyung had seen more laughing, bickering, frowning in the last half a day than he thought he ever had in their time in the slums. And if their plan failed, if they lost and were obliterated and the world carried on the way it was, how many personalities would be lost to that suffocating fog of regulation and dreary toil? How much difference, how much variety, how many ideas and dreams were being smothered over?

One thing was certain, and that was that no one could stand idly by and watch their friends take action. Once half of them were decided, the other half agreed, however reluctantly. One by one - or in pairs, Yuwhan tugging a still reluctant Sungjong after him while he muttered about having a bad feeling about this; Sejoon escorting Sungmin in case he took fright - they disappeared into the chute to spread themselves out among the lower levels, strategically distributed like mines spread across a battlefield: none close enough to spark another, but enough that the fires they started individually would swiftly meet at the centre. "We don't want them to be able to trace this back to any one district," Taewoon said.

Kyung had held back until the last minute, knowing that Taewoon would have been watching his brother the entire time, and seeing the slow discomfort begin to settle on his features as he understood just how little control they would have once they had fanned the flames into an inferno. Sure enough, a large hand comes down on his shoulder just before he follows Taeil into the chute, and he turns to see the large figure behind him, reluctantly grim.

"I want you to come with us," Taewoon said, voice lowered so that Jiho wouldn't hear - he was a few feet away, head down, picking absently at the mark on his wrist. "I don't know - he might back out at the last minute, and he's the one with the control here, really." It had become obvious to Kyung in the past few hours that Taewoon did not trust his brother - and Jiho was, perhaps understandably, angry at having been left behind to be controlled. Much as he disliked being forced to mediate, he knew Jiho would more readily listen to him than he would to his sibling - and Kyung could tell him the truth about the lower levels, could make him understand quite viscerally what he was condemning thousands of people to if he failed to act. Taewoon's control over the central data hub had been dissolved the day he ran away; once they were up there, they were completely reliant on Jiho to do what needed to be done.

Kyung hadn't said anything, just nodded quietly and slipped out from behind Taewoon to stand by the younger brother's side, waking him out of his daze with a firm hand at his wrist. "You okay?"

Jiho's face was terrified, fierce and furious. It almost made Kyung retreat but he held his grip and shook the other boy gently. "It's gonna be alright, I promise."

"If it's not?" Jiho said. "If something goes wrong - if they hurt - " His eyes flashed to the looming figure behind them and the anger grew in his expression - a protective sort of anger which Kyung couldn't pin to any one person. "He doesn't understand," he said more quietly. "He's been gone ten years, he doesn't understand."

Kyung didn't understand either but he'd pretended he did, stroked up and down Jiho's arm soothingly and murmured, "I know, I know, but you have to be brave," all the while wondering who he was so keen to protect.

 

They crawl for what seems like hours before they finally stop at an intersection; the faint sound of chamber music drifting down the chute brings a shiver of recognition to Kyung's spine and he knows they must be at the very top, near the living quarters of the highest level. Taewoon crunches himself up and twists around enough to look back at the two of them: Kyung, breathing hard and gritting his teeth, and Jiho behind him, trembling so hard he can feel the vibration of the metal under his hands.

"Right," he says in an urgent whisper. "We're near the very centre of the city, where the controller has his rooms." Kyung notes that he doesn't say 'father', and he's glad for it; it could only have unsettled Jiho still further. "Remember, there'll be guards all over the place so as soon as you get out of the chute, get to your feet and get your guns ready. Shoot first, don't think about it. We'll only have a minute at most to switch the cameras over, and then we have to get back in here and go - as fast as you can. Jiho?"

Jiho nods, finds Kyung's hand in the darkness and grips it painfully tight.

"You're sure you know what to do?"

"I've seen the control room before," he says. "All I have to do is get access to the data banks and you can do the rest."

His brother nods sharply, and they move on a few more metres until they come up against the smooth opening of the chute. As a thin chink of light appears around the edges, as it makes a soft grating sound and slides open, Kyung tenses himself up, grips the unfamiliar handle of his weapon, and gathers everything inside himself up. This is the moment, he thinks. This is the moment his dream comes true.

There's a soft thud as Taewoon lands, and Kyung finds himself stumbling straight into his broad back when he exits behind him, Jiho in turn staggering into his shoulder and freezing up almost instantly. Trapped between the taller boys Kyung grows a little frantic, unable to see the inside of the room.

Despite his instructions Taewoon hesitates - only for a second, but he hesitates - before firing two sharp shots. Two bodies hit the floor with a dull slap.

"Well well," someone says. "Jiseok, you've become a killer." The voice is harsh, grating, refined and deadly, a blade that, although rusted, still cuts with perfect accuracy, and Kyung's insides turn to ice. Only then does Taewoon step forward, and he sees the shimmering expanse of ceiling; the wide semi-circle of the desk knotted with screens and keys; behind it, the man whose features are bold and startlingly handsome but so inhuman - so utterly inhuman.

"Like father like son," Taewoon snarls, and steps further out into the room, enough to let the two boys beside him spread out.

"I have never killed anyone," the controller says, and his eyes flick with that penetrating, ruthless focus, between the faces of his two sons.

"Maybe not directly," Taewoon spits right back. "I guess that makes me the braver man."

His father inclines his head, very slowly, not taking his eyes off them. "Everything you've done has been very brave," he concedes, "if ridiculously foolish. But are you brave enough to commit patricide?"

At Kyung's side Jiho sinks a little like his knees are giving way, and his father turns a satisfied, carnivorous smile on him. "Jiho, are you really willing to throw everything away for the sake of these dissidents? I thought I had adequately warned you against the dangers of sentimentality when I showed you what became of your young friend. The one you whined so much about."

For a moment Kyung is baffled, thinks about how he hadn't seen Jiho in ten years until just a day ago - but he sees the way Jiho's face turns first sickly white and then pink with anger and it dawns on him with an ugly shock. "What you did to Jihoon," Jiho croaks out, "all that did was warn me never to become like you."

For a moment irritation crosses the set features, and then the controller waves a hand, dismissing the show of emotion that he obviously finds so repulsive and pointless. "Everyone has their place. It is necessary that they adhere to theirs, that we might properly occupy ours. A city needs a leader."

"A true leader shares in the lot of his people," Taewoon says sharply, and his father sneers.

"Your mother and her glorious ideals. I should never have let her interfere with your education." At this both brothers tense, hands balling into fists.

Between the three family members, Kyung feels utterly forgotten, but it gives his brain some time to work and for that he's thankful. He can see, on the control desk, the screens which undoubtedly control the cameras; even at a distance small figures are visible flickering on them, fading in and out as the display cycles through circuit after circuit, level after level.

"If she had taken control, things would never have ended up this way."

"If she had taken control, there would be chaos. Some people," and this time Kyung feels the full force of that stare, quails as savage eyes rip him apart with a single look. "Some people will never be suited for anything more than mediocrity. Whatever false disguises they take on."

Taewoon steps ahead of him, his shoulder blocking Kyung from view, so that the controller is likewise hidden by his furiously tensed arm. "Stop stalling. We're going to take things down, whatever you say. And whatever you think," and he raises his gun arm, points it steadily across the desk, and the room becomes so quiet that their breathing is audible, "I will happily kill you if I need to. It's not patricide. I don't have a father. Only a controller."

There's a deep and ugly laugh, and Kyung hears a dull click. For a moment he thinks Taewoon must have fired and he's so shocked by it that he hasn't seen the smoke or heard the impact. 

Then he becomes aware that the room is glowing, softly around the edges like the sun above is smiling down just on them, in this single suspended moment, and a golden warmth sweeps up his body, bathing him.

It's simple, now Taewoon is standing limply with his gun at his side, to slip past him and walk towards the desk. His tread is firm and steady, and his heart is singing - the controller is beckoning him with a tender expression, like he's his own son, and his bold stern face is all he can see: all-consuming, all-powerful, all-knowing. He has been chosen; he is blessed.

And behind him the boy with the soft blonde hair gasps, mumbles something, and the other one makes a loud noise, but whatever he's saying it doesn't matter: they are both so beautiful and the room is arranged like a picture, like an exquisite painting of the most essential moment in someone's life. He steps behind the desk and turns to face them, smiling, perfectly at ease. The hand that clasps his shoulder floods his veins with strength and self-assurance. He is coherent and he fits and whatever happens, everything is going to be perfect. It could not be otherwise.

"Now," the voice rings out - that loving voice which holds them all so securely, shows them what is right and wrong. "Is your choice so simple?" He doesn't understand why the taller boy looks so furious - how can he be angry when this is only the way everything is supposed to be? It was inevitable that they should end up like this, and he is blessed to be a small part of it. "What did they have planned, son?" The voice addresses him this time - addresses him directly, how could he have ever deserved such a gift? "What were they going to do? You can tell me; they're dissidents, they can't be trusted."

"Kyung," the blonde boy sobs out. It's a nice word but it doesn't mean anything to him. He turns his face up to the one bending over him, meets the deeply pooled eyes with perfect love and perfect trust.

"There are rebels spread throughout the levels," he says, and his heart almost bursts with joy when he receives a beneficent smile. "They planned to switch the cameras so everyone in the lower levels can see the glory of the top. They planned to instigate rioting. They intend to upset the natural order of our city."

The taller boy storms forward, stops with a hand on his arm, but he doesn't spare them a glance; his gaze is entirely taken up with this benevolent and awesome figure who holds him so tightly, and he knows he's keeping him safe, protecting him like he protects all those below him, and he wants to kiss the knuckles of the hand that clasps him. All of this beauty is of this man's creation, held under his watchful gaze, and tears of adoration spring to his eyes.

The other hand - broad, steady - stretches towards the control desk, towards the screen where thousands of people are playing out their lives and in the ceaseless flicker of images he sees ghosts, here and there, of things which might be familiar, but it doesn't matter because he is high above them now and soon, he knows, his feet will leave the floor. The light floods the room, continues to suffuse his body until his skin heats up, his bones feel like they're quite easily disintegrating and he begins to grow loose, joints sliding against one another until the hand around his shoulders is the only thing supporting him.

"Stop," someone screams; the word is garbled and too frantic for the celestial air he breathes. It's the last thing he hears properly, juddering through him and knocking his legs from under him so he sinks to the floor, suffocating on this divine, rare, beautiful light.

 

He surfaces, gasping for air, with Jiho's hands on his shoulders, shaking desperately. It's just like that first time but twice as frantic. When his vision rights itself and he meets his eyes clearly, Jiho sits back on his heels and sobs with relief.

"Oh thank you," he says to no one in particular, "thank you, thank you."

Kyung's brain is buzzing and everything aches. It takes a moment for him to sit up, dizzy from the lack of oxygen. Only then does he see the body sprawled on the floor and the pool of blood that just touches his feet. He looks to Jiho; Jiho stares back.

"You - you didn't," he says hoarsely. Like he's not even aware of the still-smoking gun in his hand, Jiho twitches his shoulders up.

"I had to," he says, "he was going to kill you."

"Less talk, more speed," Taewoon snaps from above them, and Jiho staggers to his feet somehow, dropping the gun and gripping the side of the desk for support. With him out of the way Kyung can see the face, twisted in a rictus of fury in the moment of death, and can't comprehend how he ever found it anything but frightful. He shivers and looks away, scrambling to his feet next to the two brothers, whose heads are bent low over the control desk. "Change the inputs over," Taewoon mutters, "Then we should get the hell out of here."

Jiho grabs his elbow with a look of amazement and - to Kyung's absolute astonishment - he laughs, laughs right in Taewoon's grim and increasingly annoyed face. "Idiot," he says, "You think they'll come and arrest the person who shot the controller?" And he flashes his wrist at them, and the big red W is brighter than ever, the skin raised and almost visibly pulsing. "I am the controller now."

 

With their plan now neutralised there's not a lot else to do. They sit; they wait; the body behind them doesn't move and the blood seeps across the floor until it begins to congeal. Kyung tries hard not to look at it, watching instead the two brothers and their glowing faces as they discuss how they're going to restructure the city now they're in control. The guards arrive only a minute later, stumble in and halt in total confusion as their control patches go haywire; Jiho settles them all easily with a show of his wrist and a display of the body behind them.

They assume the wrong thing, of course, and round on Taewoon immediately - the only person without a patch of his own, and his royal insignia long since disabled - but a single ferocious sound from Jiho stops them as they're pulling his hands behind his back. "The former controller became corrupted," he says without hesitance. "He had to be brought down for the good of the city. My brother and I will be taking charge as of today, and you will direct your loyalty towards us." Kyung gets the feeling that Taewoon rather enjoys turning a haughty look on the guards hastily shuffling away from him. "I understand there is unrest in the lower levels," Jiho continues. "The ringleaders are escapees from level five - you should have their details in your data banks. Bring them here - unharmed, is that clear? Do not use force. Anyone found employing force will be dismissed from their post immediately."

Despite her confusion the leader of the guards clearly knows her job well, salutes Jiho smartly - and Taewoon as well, after a moment's pause - and leads her group from the room. "That should occupy them a while," Jiho says. "I hope the guys down there haven't made things too bad already."

"I guess this is a lot easier than starting a riot," Taewoon says, although the way he's chewing on his thumbnail suggests that he's still not entirely happy with how things have turned out. He has a lot more experience with the guards' violence than Jiho, after all; Kyung can't help but be worried for their friends in the lower levels. "We were stupid not to think that he'd be waiting for us here."

"The plan would still have been of use, if he hadn't - " Jiho starts out consolingly, and then his attention switches to Kyung, still huddled up and small in his chair, faintly nauseous from his brush with oblivion. "I didn't come in here prepared to kill anyone," he starts again, covering up the quaver in his voice manfully. "I didn't want it to turn out like that."

"My fault," Taewoon says, and then they're both looking at Kyung, and unwillingly he raises his eyes to meet theirs. They're both nervous but Taewoon looks nearly distraught, miserable and apologetic in a way Kyung didn't think his jovial, blunt face was even capable of expressing. "I'm so sorry Kyung. I brought you in here with that patch on - I totally forgot, I didn't even think he'd be able to switch it on."

Seeing that distress on his face just makes Kyung uncomfortable. He shifts in his chair, shrugs uneasily. "I dunno, it's kind of my fault too. When I got rid of everyone else's I didn't even think about mine."

"Let me return a favour, then," Jiho says, and holds his hand out for the little tool which Kyung still carries with him. It doesn't hurt when the pins slide out, but he understands why Jiho had to lie down for a little while, and he does the same - well away from the sticky puddle of blood.


	7. Seven

After a while Jiho remembers the conference room leading off the control centre, and they install themselves in there. The heady stench of blood hanging in the air and the silent but oppressing presence of the body on the floor was weighing on their weary minds. Here there is a wide table occupying the centre of the room, ringed with enormous high-backed chairs. Already Jiho looks every inch the young ruler, straight-backed and serious as he touches his wrist to the top of the table and watches the map of the city roll across it in gently glowing lights. Taewoon, at his side, is still rangy and dressed in black, military in appearance. They make a striking pair: the war lord and the politician. Kyung lies right back in his seat and gazes up at the rolling vista of sky, gently dozes off to the sound of the brothers' low-voiced conferring.

He shudders upright again at the dreadful recognition of a high-pitched whining sound. Jiho rises to his feet so quickly that he knocks his chair back and stares with fury at the door as it swings open and the drones file in, each one holding a white-faced, sullen captive. The leader of the guards brings up the rear and indicates down the line, impassive but proud.

"We recovered nine of the eleven renegades, sir," she says. "No force was used." Kyung can see with a single look that she's lying, although the bruises ringing various eyes and mouths most likely came from the cruel arms of the drones and not from the guards themselves.

"Release them immediately," Jiho orders, his voice shaking. Wrong-footed, the guard takes a few seconds to fumble the control from her belt and force the drones to disengage their pincer arms. Each boy stumbles away, rubbing their throats and breathing hard. "Who didn't - "

"Sungjong," Sungmin gasps before he can even ask. He looks wild with fear and worry, and stumbles forward a bit too far, crashing into the table. He turns, stares back at Yuwhan who spreads his hands helplessly.

"I'm sorry," he pleads, "I'm so sorry - we got separated in the line and he panicked, he looked up for me and they spotted him straight away, I couldn't - I couldn't do anything without blowing our cover," and then he has to stop because the younger boy flies at him with his fists raised, restrained only barely by two of his friends.

"You traitor," he howls, "he trusted you - we trusted you - "

"You can trust him." Taewoon's steady voice cuts through the screeching and Sungmin halts mid-struggle, flinging his gaze to the stately man standing by the table. Taewoon meets his eyes steadily, quelling his fury so easily that Kyung can't help but remember his earlier, spiteful comment - like father like son - and wonder if this is why they all obeyed him so readily. "If Yuwhan says that's what happened, you should believe him."

"We know him," Jungwoo breaks in unexpectedly. Out of all of them, he's the only one who doesn't look angry, or frightened - just weary of the whole ordeal, and Kyung can understand that weariness so well. It gets tiring, losing people so often. "Jiseok and I were in class together, and Yuwhan was just younger than us. I promise you guys, much as he's not great with people," and he gives Taewoon a hard look that makes him fold his mouth guiltily, "he wouldn't let you come to harm, not intentionally. If you trust me, trust him."

"Why should we?" With his pointed features under the mop of dyed-fiery hair, Jungkook's flashing eyes makes him look like a demon. "He told us he would switch the cameras, and then we find ourselves being arrested - why would we trust anything you say?"

"The plan changed a bit. We didn't have time to tell you," Taewoon replies, shrugging. Kyung finds himself getting angry then, on behalf of his bewildered friends. They're supposed to be free now, not just pawns in a different game. He only means to shut Taewoon up a bit but he finds the larger boy startled by his glare, raising his hands in front of him. "Kyung will explain," he says - almost meekly, and Kyung turns to his friends, trying not to roll his eyes. 

They quiet when he tells them what had happened: about the controller lying dead on the floor; about his own brush with complete erasure; about their plans for a new society. A few of them glance to Jiho - conspicuously silent and apparently intent on the table top - when he mentions how the son had turned on the father; their faces express admiration, disbelief, but most importantly a new kind of faith that perhaps things really would change now. "And where's Taeil?" he finishes up, having noticed the absence of his old chef. Minhyuk shrugs; Yukwon's mouth is twisting like he's biting into his lip from the inside.

"I didn't see him after we left the chute."

"He's probably still out there," Minhyuk says, half-hopeful, half-exasperated. "You know what Taeil's like, he'll have found a way to evade arrest. Maybe he's gone back to the hideout."

"And Sungjong?" At this point they turn back to the two brothers, the ones who know the ups and downs of this city better than any of them, and Kyung begins to feel sick as soon as he notices how pale they've gone.

Fumbling in a pouch tied to his belt, Taewoon takes out a handful of small pieces of metal, crusted with blood, sorts through them and picks out one which he throws to the guard. "You know where he'll be. Find him and bring him here, immediately." Then he meets the tense faces surrounding him, shakes his head gently. "There's only one place an escapee from level five would have gone, if he'd been arrested unpatched and untagged."

No one understands until Jihoon, standing at the back of the room, makes a gagging noise and Jaehyo has to throw an arm around him to keep him upright. Then the room erupts into chaos: Sungmin all but flings himself across the table in his efforts to get at Taewoon; Kyung finds himself trapped between Jiho and a seething Jungkook, struggling against Jungwoo's grip. Jihoon sinks to the floor, sobbing, while Minhyuk throws up his hands and turns towards the door, looking like he'd happily return to the kitchens and work another twelve hour shift rather than deal with this.

Except he's blocked in his exit by the towering frame of a guard, who then moves aside, apparently sharply prodded from behind, and a clear voice snaps out, "Stop this noise at once!"

Something in the order shuts all of them up in an instant; something in the tone makes them shift back and squirm slightly, like they've been caught in a misdemeanour. Only Jiho moves, jerking to one side and peering around the others. His eyes get very big and round, his mouth drops open. Through the open doorway sails a woman: tiny, slender, elegantly dressed; her face is fine-boned and the eyes quick and bright as a sparrow, narrowed in anger. Kyung sucks in a breath of recognition as she approaches the table, and the boys surrounding it drop back automatically, suddenly awkward.

No one, however, looks quite as awkward as Taewoon; he glances over at the ever-present waste chute as if sizing up his chances of a quick escape, but he doesn't have a hope as soon as she fixes her eyes upon him. She ignores Jiho's breathless gasp of, "Mother!" and rounds on her eldest son, who scrambles to his feet and uncertainly, shakily, holds out his hands.

She slaps him hard across the face. Jungkook lets out a cackle. "What was that for?" he says, but his cheeks are already flaming red and he's twitching like he wants to back away but doesn't quite dare.

"Running away like that - living in the basement like a fugitive - you didn't even leave me a note, Woo Jiseok, have you any idea how worried I was - " And all the boys in the room - bar Jiho, who looks quite as cowed as his brother - step back and enjoy the sight of the big, brash outlaw getting heartily berated by his tiny, fuming mother.

It takes a good ten minutes for her to run out of steam, at which point she makes a gesture that indicates she's done with her eldest son and he drops, thankfully, into the nearest chair and sets about trying to make himself invisible. Then she turns to Jiho - and, to Kyung's surprise, doesn't spare him her searching eye, beckoning him forward. Not without some trepidation he moves to stand by Jiho's shoulder. "Now," she says, still sharply, "What mess is it that you boys have got yourselves into?"

The story has to be told once again - this time from the very beginning, and it's slow progress because she insists on understanding everything in detail, stops Kyung and questions him intently. He's so tired he's stumbling over his words by the end, and when they're finally done she pats his shoulder tenderly and thanks him. "You've been very brave, dear. And an excellent friend to my son."

The exhaustion prevents him from accepting this with much more than a nod, although a sort of warmth coils in his belly and he sits down feeling nearly comforted. She turns back to Jiho, takes his hand tightly. "So you've killed your father?" Clearly Jiho understands it would be no use apologising; he just admits it with a painful shrug. She sighs, strokes his palm idly. "Well, I can't say he didn't have it coming. You boys know I never agreed with the way he ran things, but I'm glad I was at least able to teach you enough to show you that it was wrong - not," and she turns another hard glare on Taewoon, "that I agree with some of your methods."

"He was going to patch me," Taewoon pleads, "I wouldn't have been able to do anything!"

"You silly boy, do you really think I would have let that happen?"

"You let it happen to me," Jiho says bluntly. Her anger fades then, and she lowers her eyes with a sigh.

"Then, I had to. He always knew it was my influence that made you both so rebellious. I was determined that one of you would see my grandfather's dream rebuilt. After Jiseok ran away he watched me like a hawk. I knew that if I tried to interfere again, he'd have no compunction about setting up an entirely new family. He would have murdered both of us sooner than see his control slip."

"Grandfather?" Kyung stutters out the question before he has time to think. She turns gentle eyes on him, a distant and not entirely happy smile.

"My grandfather was the original founder of this city. My father should have taken control after him, but he was too young; the second in command took over instead, married me to his son to legitimise the chain of command. I never saw my father again. That was when everything changed." The softening of her tone seems to soften something else in her, and she spreads her arms wide, one around Jiho, Taewoon uncertainly letting himself be embraced by the other. "I knew you'd manage it eventually. I'm so very proud of both of you."

She holds this maternal pose for only a few moments. Then the businesslike demeanour snaps right back into place, and she leans forward over the table, looks around at the worn out, confused boys sitting there and clucks her tongue disapprovingly. "We've got an awful lot to sort out, haven't we? You there," and she clicks her fingers for the guards still standing impassively at the entrance. "Find these boys some comfortable rooms, and a hot meal."

 

Exhausted though he is, Kyung can't bear to miss a second of what's going to happen- and even if he'd wanted to, Jiho's tight hold on his arm and gently beseeching look would have kept him there. He stays while Jiho breaks the news over the announcement system, in a carefully worded speech that his mother writes for him. His tone is convincingly authoritative and strong, but Kyung can see the way his eyes are twitching at the corners. When he's done he pushes the microphone away and breaks into a cold sweat, burying his face in his hands as the enormity of what's happened finally hits him. 

And amazingly, it is to Kyung that his mother trusts him, pushing them both in the direction of Jiho's rooms and whispering to him, "Stay with him, he'll need you tonight." Kyung needs Jiho to stay upright as they find their way to that glorious room. They fall side by side on the massive bed and despite the unfamiliar softness of it, Kyung sleeps like a dead man.

He can't quite believe it when eighteen hundred strikes - that so much could have happened in a single day. They had been sitting side by side in Jiho's room for less than an hour, still rubbing aching eyes, burying their noses in hot mugs of tea - Kyung had never tasted anything so immensely comforting, and thought that those long evenings in the slums would have passed a lot easier with it - and wondering why their rumbling stomachs hadn't yet been attended to. By eighteen hundred, pressed and chivvied by Jiho's mother, they're standing outside the doors to the grand dining room, Jiho nervously preparing to greet the elite (although not for long) citizens of his new rule, and Kyung tugging awkwardly at the collar of his borrowed finery. Behind them Taewoon is still grumbling about being forced to dress up; his mother had forbidden him to wear his outlaw garb to dinner, whatever he said about the impression it would make. 

And behind him - such a thing had never happened, not since the earliest days of the city - are eleven boys, born and bred in the slums and now ready to sit at the highest table. Their faces fit in, since their brief stint on level five, but the bruises inflicted by the drones stand out against their pristine white shirts. Sungjong, recovered unharmed although newly patched from the seediest, most secret part of the city, is still twitchy and unsettled, pressing up close to Sungmin for comfort; Taeil, who Sejoon had brought back from the hide out earlier, hadn't had time to wash properly and already has grubby fingerprints on his cuffs. They shuffle, they mutter, they pick at the gilded buttons on their shirts and scuff shining shoes against the floor, and Kyung looks back at them all with a bursting wave of affection.

If there had been any chatter in the room before they entered, it drops dead the moment the doors open. The long line files in; Jiho holds a chair out for his mother and gestures Kyung to the seat at his other side. The faces - the beautiful, blank faces of the nobility - gaze back at them with utter astonishment. Jiho doesn't need to raise his hand for quiet but he does it anyway.

"As you have all heard, my father, the controller, is dead. I have assumed his mantle of power, and will lead this city forward into a new age, with the help of my family and friends," and he nods to Taewoon, silent and grave, and Kyung, who grins and gave him a thumbs up just because it's so wildly inappropriate in their surroundings. "My first task is to free all the people of the city from the bondage in which they live, and that includes you."

Slowly, ceremoniously, he lifts the control device he'd had made up, a small flat square of metal - lifts it up where everyone can see it and raises his right arm as well, displaying the glowing red W on the inside of his wrist. A low murmur sweeps the room as the cream of society find themselves, for once, in complete ignorance of what is going to happen. Jiho glances again to Kyung; Kyung nods; he presses his wrist to the square and the room is suddenly alive.

Alive first with a series of tiny clicks as each panel shuts down, and then with noise - a glorious, beautiful human noise. There are cries of distress, shouts of rage, screams of delighted laughter; some people leap to their feet, shaking fists at an imaginary adversary; some simply sit, mute and bewildered; some clutch the backs of their necks and moan, but no one is still, no one is impassive. The smile that spreads over Jiho's face reminds Kyung once more of the boy he had known in the classroom: wicked, spirited, mischevious, pulling the biggest prank of his life as the stony faced and ever perfect elite are forced back into themselves and become, without warning, people once more.

The dinner that follows is raucous to the point of unbearable. Nearly everyone is celebrating, and those who aren't - those who shoot dark glances up at the head of the table and muttered ominously among themselves - only added to the new and wonderful variety of expressions that Kyung sees. While Jiho presides over festivities, Taewoon keeps a close watch on anyone who seems disgruntled with the change of affairs, frequently beckoning a guard up to his shoulder and muttering into the waiting ear. Refreshed after his deep sleep, Kyung can barely stay in his seat and dashes from chair to chair, reassuring himself of the reality of everything with the feeling of real warm skin under his fingers, and even Minhyuk, never previously the physical sort, had let him cling on for a good few minutes, laughing at the tight hold Kyung had around his shoulders.

"It's over," he says, "I can't believe it's all over."

Once everyone is sated and sitting back, still wonderingly running their fingers over their necks, Jiho gets to his feet again. "I have a lot to do, and I hope I have your full confidence, and that you will offer me all the aid you can in setting right the injustices perpetrated by the previous controller. Please remember, I am not depriving you of your status. I am only making the luxury that you enjoy the rule, rather than the exception. If you still believe you deserve this high status over others, after hearing how this hierarchy came to be, I would ask you to remember that all destiny is a game of chance. If the dice favour you, it is not of your own doing."

Kyung goes to applaud but no one else does. Then he becomes aware - his chest seizing up rapidly - that it is to him that everyone looks, following Jiho's lead. Jiho's eyes lock onto his and he nods encouragingly, and Kyung realises what he wants. For a moment he wonders, and not for the first time, why it should be him, but then he remembers that really, despite Taewoon's rebellion and Jiho's power, despite Sejoon's arrest and his dorm mates' seditious talking, all of this really begins and ends with him. He thinks back to that first moment he saw the outlaw crouched high on the pipes, when he shut his lips tight and only wished for that sort of freedom, and finally - not through necessity, or control, but genuinely and honestly - he feels truly part of something.

Clumsily he gets to his feet, drains the glass in front of him for strength and belatedly uses it to salute Jiho, his mother, his brother, all his friends.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he begins - pauses, laughs disbelievingly, throws his arms wide. "People."

It takes a good two hours, much prompting from the family group beside him, many shocked exclamations from the table and random outbursts of anger or hilarity from his friends, but no one moves a muscle to leave until he's done.

 

A daunting amount of work lies ahead of them. They have to start slowly, much as it pains them all to know that people are still starving in the slums; a whole society can't be reordered overnight, and Jiho's mother reminds them frequently of this when they're chafing at the sights projected by the cameras in the lower levels. One of the first things they do is locate their own parents; that alone takes two or three days and a lot of heartbreak when they find that more than half of them have lost at least one family member. Much of level five has become dilapidated after standing empty so long; Jiho gets teams together from the third levels to work on making it habitable again. People from the third level start to migrate to the fourth; those in the second, to the third. The invisibles of level zero are moved up, group by group, to more comfortable quarters and a long process of interviewing begins, ascertaining who - despite their truncated educations - has the skills to take on new roles. The hidden level, the filthy brothels which had caused them all so much pain, are raided and shut down, and their silent broken inhabitants given special care in the city hospitals. Working hours are cut, immediately, for everyone in levels one and two, and the message filters down that in their free time they are welcome to roam at will throughout the city, no longer confined to stuffy dorm rooms. It takes a while for it to sink in but gradually the sight becomes normal: pale, sickly-looking men and women creeping at first through the grand corridors, staring with bewilderment through the glittering glass ceiling. Then they grow bolder, slipping into the libraries and recreation rooms. Jiho keeps himself well in sight and insists the other boys do likewise; whenever he sees these migrants, if they don't run away instantly, he invites them to dine with him.

The former nobility present a challenge, and this is where Taewoon takes over. He deals personally with anyone who expresses discontent; how, Kyung doesn't like to ask, but he gets the idea that it involves some real life experience of the impoverished conditions below. One man disappears for a few weeks and comes back with haunted eyes; Taewoon looks somewhat regretful but the man never again looks at the former waiting staff who sit at dinner with him with anything less than respect. The guards dwindle - they're educated people, and they can't be spared to march around with guns any more. Jiho shuts off their patches, takes away their weapons and divides them out among the levels, delivering aid and reporting on conditions, leading people to their new homes. A week or so after the takeover a few of them go rogue, try to break into the control room and wrestle Jiho out of there; the drones arrive just in time and Taewoon smiles with grim satisfaction as he escorts them to the cells.

Taeil and Sejoon take over the kitchens, replace the foul leftovers that pass as rations with nourishing meals which they deliver with their own team to the baffled workers below. The seizure of children coming of age from the classrooms stops the same day Jiho takes over; his mother sets about organising groups of new teachers, picked from the most intelligent level two and three workers, and starts developing a program of free classes for everyone who missed out. Kyung rediscovers his skill for maths and logic, and sets his sights on a teaching position once he's brought up to scratch. The heady feeling of being good at something is one he'd totally forgotten.

Of course it's an intense and frightening time. Kyung still wakes in the night, expecting to see the black spire of the drones looming over him, or the walls rising blank and stony around his bed, and he knows from the dark circles under his friends' eyes that they're not quite accustomed to this new position of status either. Because everyone seems to know who they are now: the boys who assisted Jiho in his father's takeover. For Kyung the scrutiny is even worse, because Jiho wants him at his side nearly all the time, and he gets used to watching people bow to their leader and sweep their eyes sideways at the boy next to him, wondering if they should attend him with the same honour. After a while he starts to wish he had his old face back, so at least that would be one clue to his real importance, but Jiho nearly shakes him when he expresses this.

"You're still in that same mindset, that you don't deserve to be here," he says, utterly exasperated. "I'm not above you, I'm not trying to put myself above you. You know, this probably wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for you - you're just as important as me, or Jiseok, or anyone else - more even, maybe. You have the same right to respect that everyone else does."

"It's just awkward," he replies, twisting uncomfortably under Jiho's hard stare. "I'm not educated or - you know, refined or anything. I don't know how any of these things work - "

"It doesn't matter any more." And Jiho grips his shoulder, knitting his eyebrows sympathetically. "I know it must be strange, but this is the truth of it: there are no rules any more. There's nothing to say who can and can't be in certain places, have certain things, do certain jobs. You belong here with me because you saved me. If the old nobility look at you weirdly because you use the wrong fork or don't pronounce your vowels like they do, just remember that if it wasn't for you, they'd still be puppets. They owe you their freedom. You don't owe anyone anything."

Difficult as it is to get his head round this, it eventually slots into place, and strangely it happens when he has an encounter he didn't expect to have again. Walking into the dining room one evening, taking Jiho at his word and dressing for his own comfort rather than for the expectations of others - and this is easier, now half of the table is made up of people from the lower levels, and elegance and expense is by no means the rule any more - he sees someone at Taewoon's side, smiling genially as the taller boy talks and gesticulates wildly. The arched brows and fine nose are ones he only remembers hazily, haloed in that surgical white light, but Mino apparently never forgets his own work. As soon as he glances up and meets Kyung's eyes, the eyebrows disppear almost to his hairline and he gets to his feet.

"Goodness," he says, surveying him carefully. "I have to say, I never expected you to wear into that face quite so well."

"You mean it was a temporary hack job?" Kyung jokes, to take the edge off the incredulity with which Mino looks at him.

"Not at all. My work is never a hack job. I meant that you look born to it." He reaches out with two slender fingers and tips Kyung's face up to the light, turning it from side to side just like he did that day in his surgery. His eyes take in every line and plane, and he smiles as he releases him - not a calculating smile, but a smile of genuine warmth still tinged with disbelief. "You look comfortable. At ease. Even without the patch."

Kyung's slightly wrong footed; he looks to one side, out across the table, to buy himself time to think - but then he understands what Mino is talking about. The crowd is a mixture of everyone: those who would have been considered the highest, to those from the very bottom of the city. Former nobles rub shoulders with assembly line workers, serving staff with their skin grey from the kitchen, bleary eyed beaurecrats in cheap black suits. The upright posture of guards contrasts with the hunched over, hacking miners who squint with wonder through the glass ceiling. Greasy-handed engineers; long-fingered artisans; a couple of freed political prisoners with ugly red wounds where their nails once were. Jiho, the heir who rebelled, and Taewoon, the rebel who is once again an heir.

What marks invididuals out is the way they react to this melee of people, to their glorious surroundings; how they move through the room and approach the company. And while some stutter and apologise for themselves in the way they speak and walk, some - a rare few - possess a certain ease of posture, a certain natural air: not necessarily comfort in their surroundings, but comfort in their own skins.

"That's a very hard thing to acquire," Mino says lazily, leaning on the table and watching the comprehension dawn on Kyung's face. "You're either born with it - some lucky people seem to be," and here he gives an amused look towards Taewoon, "Or you learn it. You learn to be comfortable with yourself whatever the circumstances are. It's nothing to do with the shape of your face or the clothes you're wearing. It's just about knowing that you can always survive."

Something in his tone makes Kyung turn his head, wondering suddenly about Mino himself and his smooth flawless skin, but he's already melted away into the crowd, taking Taewoon with him. Alone for the moment, Kyung looks out into the room at the mess of people, all lit the same by the subtle glow of the sun through the endlessly arching ceiling. In a few more months, no one will be able to tell that this room was once so ruthlessly segregated. No one would know he had come from the lowest levels to stand by the side of the controller. No one need ever know that he had once been someone else entirely, one small scrawny boy, trapped in the relentless crushing grind of the city and hopeless of ever getting free. He smiles, takes his seat at the table and prepares to begin his new life.


End file.
